Mr Medvedev met Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez in Orenburg. Tthe Kremlin issued a statement calling their relations a “counterweight to US influence” and added that Venezuela sought “a widening of our presence in the region”.

“We are ready to consider opportunities for cooperating on the use of atomic energy,” Mr Putin told Mr Chavez during earlier talks in Moscow.

“Latin America is becoming a noticeable link in the whole chain of the emerging multipolar world. We will pay more and more attention to this area of our economic and foreign policy.”

The announcement of atomic assistance is certain to alarm Washington. Moscow has already angered the West by delivering enriched uranium to Iran for its Russian-built power station, amid fears that Tehran is secretly building a nuclear bomb.

Venezuela’s fiercely anti-American leader has long coveted his own nuclear energy programme, but insists that he has no desire to build an atomic bomb. He lavished praise on Mr Putin during his second visit to Russia in as many months.

“Today, like never before, all that you said on the multi-polar world becomes reality. Let us not lose time...The world is developing fast geopolitically,” Mr Chavez said. ...

Mr Medvedev said that the joint naval exercises between Russia and Venezuela would demonstrate “the strategic nature of our relations”. The Kremlin earlier announced that it was giving Venezuela a $1 billion loan to buy Russian weaponry.

Mr Chavez has already struck deals worth $4.4 billion since 2005 to buy jet fighters, tanks and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. The two countries also edged closer in energy relations after Russia’s Gazprom and Venezuela’s state-run oil company struck a deal to create an “oil and gas consortium”.

Venezuela is the ninth largest oil producer in the world and a major supplier to the US, while Russia is the second largest oil exporter and has a quarter of global gas reserves. Mr Chavez said that the joint venture would be “the biggest oil consortium on the planet”.

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