By EFE
Jun 20, 2024, 01:12 AM EDT
The official visit this Thursday of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to Vietnam, the first in more than a decadedemonstrates the good relationship that both countries have had for decades and tests Vietnam’s diplomatic balance to get along with all the powers.
Putin, who landed in Hanoi early Thursday, is making his fifth visit to the Southeast Asian country after visiting North Korea, where he signed a strategic partnership agreement.
These are some of the keys to your current trip to Vietnam.
Break isolation image
With the visit to this country, which maintains a good relationship with the United States, Putin breaks the image of isolation that has accompanied him since the invasion of Ukraine.
Analyst Carl Thayer indicated in an article on Wednesday that “Russia wants to demonstrate to the Western coalition that opposes its intervention in Ukraine that it is not isolated.”
Although Putin has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Vietnam does not belong to this bodyso he has no obligation to arrest the Russian leader.
Historical relationship
The visit responds to the invitation in March of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, when the two had a telephone conversation.
It also occurs a few days after the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on the Principles of Friendly Relations between the two nations was celebrated last Sunday, which laid the foundations for their development after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
Russia is today one of the seven countries with which Vietnam has a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreementproximity that the Russian Federation inherited from the USSR.
Soviet arms support for communist Vietnam was instrumental in its wars against France and the United States, a privileged relationship that continued throughout the 1980s, when Soviet aid helped Vietnam deal with postwar misery and international isolation.
In the words of Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hog Ha to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Chernyshenko in a meeting last year: “Vietnam will never forget the support of the Russian people.”
bamboo diplomacy
In the last decade, Vietnam has maintained a foreign policy nicknamed “bamboo diplomacy” for its ability to maintain good relations with the great powers, avoiding taking sides, being flexible and taking advantage of its strategic position for its own benefit.
Last year, this allowed it to receive visits from the presidents of the United States and China, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, in just three months, and to deepen relations with both countries, with which it maintains important commercial interests.
Proof of this flexibility is that among the seven countries with which Vietnam maintains Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreements are Russia, China and the United States.
However, Putin’s visit in the middle of the war in Ukraine tests the balance of Vietnamese foreign policy and its closeness to the United States.
Neutrality towards Ukraine
One of the most recent examples of Vietnam’s aversion to taking sides is the war in Ukraine.
After the invasion, Hanoi abstained from four United Nations resolutions condemning the attack and voted against Russia being expelled from the UN Human Rights Council, something that Yusof Ishak Institute professor emeritus Ian Storey attributes to “principled , history and interests.”
The academic explained in an article in Fulcrum last March that a good part of the Vietnamese diplomatic elite attributes the conflict to a joint failure of the three major international actors.
“The West for provoking Russia with NATO’s eastern expansion, including the prospect of Ukrainian entry; “Russia for overacting in the post-Soviet space, and Ukraine for its failure to address its legitimate security concerns with Russia,” he noted.
Security and energy
Although its commercial relations with Russia are much less important than those with the United States and China, they focus on strategic sectors such as security and energy.
Vietnam has relied on Russia to purchase weapons in recent decades and its dependence remains greatdespite the fact that in recent years it has tried to diversify its military equipment suppliers.
In addition, both countries share interests in the energy sector, with the exploitation of oil and gas fields on the Vietnamese coast by Russian companies.
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