Guns and praise as Venezuela deepens Russia ties

By Frank Jack Daniel

CARACAS, July 21 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits a resurgent Russia this week on an arms shopping trip that raises the anti-U.S. leader's profile and will irritate his hosts' rivals in Washington.

Chavez, a firebrand socialist who supports Russia's increasingly bold opposition to U.S. foreign policy, will use the trip to burnish his own credentials as a fierce critic of what he calls the U.S. empire.

Moscow's friendship with Chavez, Washington's main foe in the Western Hemisphere, highlights the distance between the Kremlin and the White House, which has widened as they jockey for influence in places such as Kosovo and Georgia.

Chavez, an ex-paratrooper who accuses Washington of backing a brief coup against him in 2002, predicts the superpower's star will fade as giants such as Russia and China awaken.

"Russia has moved forward as a great geopolitical force on the international stage," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said last week. "President Chavez has built a strategy of profound political trust with Russia's principal leaders."

Chavez will rub shoulders with Russian leaders such as new President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who have clashed with Washington this month over military exercises in Georgia and U.S. plans to base a missile defense system in the Czech Republic.

It is Chavez's fifth visit since taking office in 1999. He wants to buy submarines, tanks and surface-to-air missiles to extend a major retooling of Venezuela's armed forces.

He has already bought several billion dollars worth of fighter jets, helicopters and rifles on trips that are partly aimed at reminding voters back home he has influential friends who also want to see a shift in power away from Washington.