Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the headquarters of Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobas on Tuesday at the start of a two-day visit aiming to increase energy and defense deals.

Medvedev, on a regional tour seeking to assert Moscow's global power and wave a defiant message at Washington, was later due to meet President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Russian leader -- whose country is the world's second producer of crude oil and controls one fourth of the planet's gas reserves -- spent more than an hour at the headquarters of the Brazilian oil company.

The visit aimed to "identify opportunities for cooperation between Petrobras and Russian companies in areas such as exploration and production of oil and natural gas, investigation and development," the company said in a statement.

Medvedev was accompanied by senior officials from Gazprom, the Russian energy giant he formerly chaired, which controls about 16 percent of world reserves of natural gas.

Petrobras has a cooperation protocol with Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Medvedev was later to discuss a bilateral trade agenda with Lula that includes nuclear energy and possible defense sales, and was set to dine with the Brazilian leader at the presidential palace here.

Delegations from both countries were expected to discuss deepening a defense and security cooperation agreement for which a first protocol was signed in April.

"The bilateral agenda is vast and includes aerospace cooperation, energy resources -- especially gas -- and possible cooperation on nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," a Brazilian foreign ministry spokesman told AFP, declining to be named.

Medvedev's tour began in Peru where he signed a series of economic and political accords before traveling to regional economic powerhouse Brazil.

The Kremlin leader was due to travel Wednesday to Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is one of Washington's most virulent critics, before completing his tour in communist Cuba.

The Venezuela visit, the first ever by a Russian president, coincides with joint naval exercises in the Caribbean, in the first visit by warships to the region since the Cold War.

Russia, meanwhile, has been hard hit by the global financial crisis, casting a shadow over its global ambitions.