President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wrapped up a state visit to a longtime partner, North Korea, before heading to another, Vietnam, where he arrived early Thursday morning local time, hoping to solidify a key partnership in the region amid a protracted war in Ukraine.
Putin’s war in Ukraine, which has isolated him from the West and whose need for arms to fight it has brought him closer to North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un. The two leaders have forged a strong friendship over their shared historical adversary, the United States. Restoring the Cold War-era commitment to mutual defense between their countries.
In Vietnam, by contrast, Putin arrived in Hanoi to meet with officials who have recently forged deeper ties with Washington, according to Russian state media. But Moscow has long been Hanoi’s main source of arms, a position Putin is eager to retain.
This is Putin’s fifth visit to Vietnam. Last year he President Biden and President Xi Jinping Both leaders sought assurances from Hanoi that they would not side with the other.
For Vietnam, Putin’s visit will be an opportunity to consolidate ties with Russia, its most important defense partner. Although Vietnam has upgraded its ties with the United States, the country still Finding secret methods Last year, Russia violated US sanctions by purchasing military equipment.
Washington condemned Hanoi’s invitation to the Russian leader, saying “no country should provide Putin with a platform to promote his aggressive wars or allow him to normalize his atrocities.”
this week, New President of VietnamTo Lin told the local Russian envoy that Hanoi “has always considered Russia as one of its top partners in foreign policy.”
Here is some information about the relationship between Moscow and Hanoi.
Russia and Vietnam have deep military ties.
The Soviet Union was one of the first countries to recognize diplomatic relations with the then Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam, in 1950. For decades, Moscow was Vietnam’s largest donor, providing military assistance as Hanoi fought France and the United States.
Defense ties underlie much of the relationship between the two countries, which for years shared a communist ideology. Mr. Putin, who arrived in Vietnam with new Defense Minister Andrei R. Belousov, stressed that security was at the heart of his visit.
Nguyen The Phuong, who studies Vietnam’s military at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said Russian equipment accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of Vietnam’s defense arsenal. Russia has provided Vietnam with coastal defense missile systems, six Kilo-class submarines, fighter jets and many other lethal weapons.
According to Fang, almost all of Vietnam’s naval vessels are from Russia. He also said that Russia’s T-90 tanks are the latest batch of Russian weapons purchased by Vietnam in 2016 and are the backbone of Vietnam’s armored forces. This means that Vietnam will still rely on Russia in the coming years.
Vietnam has set its sights on arms markets other than Russia.
But Western sanctions on Moscow have heightened Hanoi’s concerns about Russia’s reliability as a supplier and made it increasingly awkward for Vietnam to continue dealing with Russia while engaging with the West.
Many Vietnamese leaders are also aware of Russian forces’ struggles with Ukraine — videos have shown Ukrainian T-90 tanks being blown up by drones — and of Russia’s deepening ties with China, which they see as a threat to Vietnam because of a long-running territorial dispute between the two countries in the South China Sea.
In recent months, Russia has begun looking to countries such as South Korea, Japan and the Czech Republic for alternative sources of weapons. Russia is also trying to build up its own defense industry. Russia has also sought help from former Soviet ally India to improve some of its weapons.
The United States has been actively offering Vietnam more weapons, with senior U.S. officials visiting the country several times in recent months. But analysts say the top of Vietnam’s defense leadership remains skeptical of Washington. They are reluctant to tie their fate to a country that must approve arms sales through Congress, which could tie deals to human rights issues.
The two countries have joint ventures in the oil sector.
Russia has a major presence in Vietnam’s lucrative oil and gas industry. Vietsovpetro, a joint venture between Russia’s Zarubezhneft and Vietnam’s state-owned PetroVietnam, operates Vietnam’s largest oil field, Bach Ho.
PetroVietnam’s profits have brought millions of dollars to Russia and Vietnam. Russian state energy companies Zarubezhneft and Gazprom are also involved in oil exploration projects in Vietnam.
For Moscow, the projects come at a time when Russia is exporting oil and gas to Europe. Has dropped significantly The ships were confined to Chinese territorial waters after the EU imposed sanctions, but they angered Beijing, which considers the waters they were in to be part of its territory.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, Vietnam was also a particularly popular destination for Russian tourists. In 2019, Russians ranked sixth in the number of tourists to Vietnam, second only to the United States. But during the pandemic, the number of tourists to Vietnam fell, and after Vietnam stopped direct flights in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, the number of tourists fell further. This year, direct flights resumed.
Mr Putin is considered popular among Vietnam’s top brass.
Since the 1950s, thousands of Vietnamese Communist Party officialsenior corporate officials, doctors, teachers and soldiers have all been trained in the Soviet Union and Russia. Among them is Nguyen Phu Trong, the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
But some argue that the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, overlooked those deep ties.
“The Vietnamese felt that Gorbachev abandoned Vietnam in the 1980s to improve relations with China, and that Yeltsin paid little attention to Vietnam throughout the 1990s,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Yusof Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “Putin brought a lot of face to Vietnam when he came to power in 2000. So the Vietnamese are grateful for that.”
He added that the Vietnamese leadership likes Putin because “he has put Vietnam-Russia relations back on track.”
Paul Sonnet and Damian Cave Contributed reporting.
