Russian President Vladimir V. Putin wrapped up a state visit to one of his allies, North Korea, and moved on to another ally, Vietnam, arriving early Thursday in the hopes of strengthening vital cooperation in the region as the two countries fight the protracted war in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has isolated Putin from the West, and a shortage of weapons for that war has drawn him closer to North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un. The two leaders have bonded over a common historic enemy: the United States, and on Wednesday revived a Cold War-era pledge of mutual defense between the two countries.
In Vietnam, by contrast, Putin has met recently with officials who are strengthening ties with Washington, but Moscow has long been Hanoi's main supplier of arms and Putin is keen to maintain that position.
This is Putin's fifth visit to Vietnam. Last year, Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Vietnam, and both leaders asked Vietnam to commit not to taking sides.
For Vietnam, Putin's visit will be an opportunity to strengthen ties with Russia, its most important defense partner. Despite strengthening ties with the United States, Vietnam was also exploring covert ways to buy Russian military equipment last year in violation of U.S. sanctions.
On Thursday morning, in keeping with the usual script, Vietnamese schoolchildren waving Russian and Vietnamese flags lined the streets of Hanoi as Putin's motorcade passed by, where he was greeted and embraced by Vietnam's new president, To Lam.
“Putin was then greeted by a 21-gun salute at the Imperial Citadel, a key historical site in the centre of the capital. A military band played the national anthems of both countries. The two leaders are due to hold a press conference after the meeting, according to Vietnamese state media.
Washington criticized Hanoi for inviting the Russian leader, saying “no country should give President Putin a platform to pursue a war of aggression or even normalize his atrocities.”
Lin told a Russian envoy there this week that Hanoi has “always regarded Russia as one of its top priority partners in foreign policy.”
Here's what you need to know about Moscow-Hanoi relations.
Russia and Vietnam have deep military ties.
The Soviet Union was one of the first countries to grant diplomatic recognition to the then Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in 1950. For decades, Moscow became Vietnam's largest donor, providing military aid when the country was at war with France and the United States.
Defense ties have long been the basis of many ties between the two countries, which share a communist ideology. Putin, who arrived in Vietnam accompanied by the country's new defense minister, Andrei R. Belousov, stressed that security issues were at the center of his visit.
Russian equipment makes up about 60 to 70 percent of Vietnam's defense arsenal, according to Nguyen The Phuong, a researcher into Vietnamese military affairs at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Russia has supplied Vietnam with coastal defense missile systems, six Kilo-class submarines, fighter jets and a host of other lethal weapons.
Nearly all of Vietnam's naval vessels are Russian-made, Phuong said. Russia's T-90 tanks were the last major Russian weapon purchase by Vietnam in 2016 and form the backbone of Vietnam's armored forces, Phuong added. This means Vietnam will continue to rely on Russia for the foreseeable future.
Vietnam has looked beyond Russia for weapons.
But Western sanctions imposed on Moscow have raised concerns in Vietnam about Russia's reliability as a supplier, making it increasingly difficult for Vietnam to continue doing business with Russia while engaging with the West.
Many Vietnamese leaders are also aware that Russian forces are struggling against Ukraine, where a drone used by Ukraine has been seen blowing up a T-90 tank, and that Vietnamese leaders also see China as a threat because of long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and are aware of growing ties between Russia and China.
Russia has in recent months turned to countries such as South Korea, Japan and the Czech Republic as alternative sources of arms and is also working to build its own defense industry. It has turned to India, a former Soviet ally, to upgrade some of its weapons.
The United States has been active in offering arms to Vietnam and has had senior government officials visit the country in recent months, but analysts say Vietnam's top defense leaders remain suspicious of Washington and are reluctant to tie their fortunes to a country where arms sales require congressional approval that may be affected by human rights abuses.
The two countries have joint ventures in the oil business.
Russia has major interests in Vietnam's lucrative oil and gas sector. Vietsovpetro, a joint venture between Russia's Zarubezhneft and Vietnam's state-run oil company PetroVietnam, operates Vietnam's largest oilfield, Bach Ho.
Profits from Vietsovpetro have generated millions of dollars for both 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 Russian oil and gas exports to Europe have plummeted in the wake of European Union sanctions, but they have irked Beijing because they are taking place in waters it claims as part of its territory.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Vietnam was a particularly attractive destination for Russian tourists: In 2019, Russia was the sixth-largest source of tourists to Vietnam among all countries after the United States. But numbers fell during the pandemic and further after Vietnam suspended direct flights in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Direct flights resumed this year.
Putin is seen as popular among Vietnamese officials.
Since the early 1950s, thousands of Vietnamese Communist Party officials, business executives, doctors, teachers and soldiers have received training in the Soviet Union and Russia, including the current party leader, Nguyen Phu Trong.
But some feel that Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris N. Yeltsin, Russia's first president, ignored these deep ties.
“The Vietnamese feel that Gorbachev abandoned Vietnam in the 1980s to improve relations with China, and Yeltsin paid little attention to Vietnam throughout the 1990s,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “Putin gave it a lot of face when he came to power in 2000, so the Vietnamese are grateful for that.”
He added that Vietnam's leaders like Putin because “he has put Vietnam-Russia relations back on track.”
Paul Sonne and Damien Cave Contributed report.
