After his visit to North Korea, Russian President Putin travelled on to Vietnam. There, the Kremlin chief was received by a military guard. Hanoi had taken a neutral stance on the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Vietnam for a state visit. The Kremlin chief was received at the presidential palace in the capital Hanoi by the recently confirmed Vietnamese President To Lam and a military guard.
On the ground, Putin wants to strengthen relations with his long-term partner. Expanding the strategic partnership with Vietnam is a priority for Russia, he said, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. At the same time, Vietnam belongs to the Asian alliance of states ASEAN, with whose members Moscow is in dialogue.
Putin also invited the Vietnamese president to Moscow next year for the 80th anniversary of the victory over Hitler’s Germany. During the visit to Vietnam, Putin is also expected to meet with the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Putin thanks for “balanced stance on Ukraine crisis”
It is Putin’s fifth visit to Vietnam as head of state. The country has been an ally of Moscow since the Soviet era. In an article for the newspaper “Nhan Dan”, which is considered the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, Putin thanked the country for its “balanced stance on the Ukraine crisis”. Hanoi abstained from UN votes on condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to Russian officials, the talks between Putin and the Vietnamese leadership will focus primarily on economic, energy and education issues. The volume of trade between the two countries in 2022 was only $3.5 billion (more than €3.2 billion), a fraction of the trade volume that Vietnam shares with China ($175 billion) and the USA ($123 billion).
It is to be expected that the Kremlin chief will want to expand trade relations and pressure Vietnam to buy weapons from Russia, Vietnam expert Carl Thayer, a former professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told the news agency dpa. At the same time, Putin wants to show that he is not internationally isolated despite the war of aggression against Ukraine.
Criticism of Putin’s visit
The US Embassy in Hanoi criticized Putin’s visit and stated that no country should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and allow him to normalize his atrocities. In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
The Ukrainian ambassador in Hanoi, Olexander Haman, told the news agency dpa that he did not expect Vietnam to abandon its neutral stance on the war and support Russia. One of the principles of Vietnamese security policy is not to take sides.
Before his visit to Vietnam, Putin traveled to North Korea. In the internationally isolated country, the Russian head of state and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed an agreement on Wednesday in which they pledged “mutual support in the event of aggression” by another state. Kim also promised Putin his “full support” in the conflict with Ukraine.