Did a high-seas fistfight nix a Russia-Venezuela submarine deal?

Posted By Joshua Keating Wednesday, May 20, 2009 - 10:36 AM Share

This seems too good to be true, but for what it's worth, Canadian defence reporter Dave Pugliese passes along a report that the planned sale of Russian nuclear submarines to Venezuela was scuppered after Hugo Chavez's bodyguards mixed it up with some Russian sailors:

...the KILOs (the subs) destined for Vietnam were originally to be purchased by Venezuela but that deal collapsed after a fistfight on board the Russian cruiser “Peter the Great” when it and other warships were visiting Venezuela.

Venezuela’s leader Chavez was in the process of visiting the Russian flotilla but his bodyguards were prevented from boarding. A fistfight then broke out between the Russian sailors and the bodyguards. The nose of one Russian was broken.

That ended the sub purchase.

Robert Farley notes that the deal is indeed off, and it's certainly not out of the question that the fight took place. But it's likely that the bigger reason Chavez balked at the deal is that his government is low on oil money these days.

THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

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USAMA2

10:51 AM ET

May 20, 2009

Canadian Bacon Fat

Is Pugliese really that shallow? He's been reading too many American and British tabloids.

Real foreign relations are not as tempermental as the party lives of hollywood starlets or shenanigans of rapper entourages.

I agree with the assumption that military expenditures on Russian submarines are probably beyond the current Venezualan budget for the forseeable future, given the state of the global economy and oil prices.

DAVID PUGLIESE

4:49 PM ET

May 20, 2009

Read first before making dumb comments

I think Usama should read my blog entry before he makes ridiculous assumptions about me.

In the blog post I clearly point out that the claim that the fist-fight ended the submarine deal came from the publisher of Seawaves, an electronic publication covering the maritime industry. The fist-fight details was on a Canadian Forces maritime website as well as in a newspaper from Venezula. Both are cited. I was passing the information on to my readers.

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