Russian President Vladimir Putin and Vietnamese President To Lam participate in an event by the Vietnam Friendship Association and generations of Vietnamese alumni who studied in the Soviet Union.
Photo: EFE – GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN
Vladimir Putin began a state visit to Vietnam, to which Russia has been supplying weapons for decades, a day after signing a defense agreement with North Korea and a possible strengthening of “military-technical cooperation,” according to Putin.
“Russia attaches great importance to strengthening relations with Vietnam,” the Russian president said after a bilateral meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, To Lam.
“We have expressed mutual interest in creating a reliable and adequate security architecture in the Asia-Pacific that is based on the principles of non-recourse to force, peaceful resolution of disputes and where there is no room for closed political-military blocs” , he claimed.
Hanoi and Moscow have signed a dozen agreements in justice, education or civil nuclear energy. Vietnam also hopes to “boost defense and security cooperation,” To Lam said.
Relations between Russia and Vietnam have their historical roots in the wars involving the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which benefited from the military support of its Soviet “big brother” to defeat the capitalist South and unite the country in 1975.
Moscow remains the main arms supplier to Vietnam, but volumes have declined in recent years, despite rising tensions in the South China Sea, where Hanoi fears Beijing’s expansionist goals.
Putin arrived in Vietnam on June 20 at dawn, after a visit to Pyongyang, where Kim Jong-un considers him North Korea’s “best friend.”
The two countries, subject to Western sanctions, closed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that provides for mutual assistance “in the event of aggression” and a possible strengthening of “military-technical cooperation,” according to Putin.
The United States and its allies fear that this accelerated rapprochement could lead to new deliveries of North Korean munitions and missiles to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Japan said it was “gravely concerned” about the deal, and the European Union approved a new package of sanctions against Moscow.
Flexible diplomacy
After his triumphant welcome in North Korea, Putin received a more formal welcome at the presidential palace in Hanoi, with cannon shots and soldiers in formation.
Russian flags and an important security device were seen in the streets of Hanoi to receive him, he reported. AFP.
The Russian president participated in a meeting of generations of former Vietnamese students who studied in the Soviet Union, among whom is Tong himself, who studied at the Academy of Sciences.
He also attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the mausoleum of the father of Vietnamese independence, Ho Chi Minh, as well as a banquet at the opera house, a colonial-style building.
Putin plans to meet with the general secretary of the CPV, Nguyen Phu Trong, considered the most influential personality in the regime. The 80-year-old leader spent part of his studies in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Putin is scheduled to leave the country this Thursday night.
Receiving Putin in Vietnam, the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), could irritate his Western partners, starting with the United States, which consider the Asian country, with 100 million inhabitants, strategic for manufacturing and the production of semiconductors, among others.
Last year, both Chinese President Xi Jinping and American President Joe Biden visited Hanoi. The country tries to maintain the same distance between the two rival superpowers, in accordance with the flexible precepts of its so-called “bamboo diplomacy” that combines prudence and pragmatism.
