The Times goes into more detail. This is significant stuff-

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....

The Kremlin despatched its nuclear-powered warship Peter the Great and a submarine destroyer, Admiral Chabanenko, to Venezuela on Monday for military exercises in the Caribbean, which is traditionally America’s backyard. It is Russia’s first naval mission to Latin America since the end of the Cold War.

The move was seen as a retort to the passage of American warships through the Black Sea to deliver aid to Georgia after the war. It came just days after Russian strategic nuclear bombers visited Venezuela for the first time, in what Mr Chavez described as a warning to the US.

Full Article- Russia to build missile defence shield and renew nuclear deterrence - Times Online

Chavez going nuclear?? I don't think the US will be too keen on that.