HANOI, May 21. /TASS/. Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and leader of the ruling United Russia party Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday arrived on a working visit in Vietnam.
According to his secretariat, Medvedev’s program includes talks with Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong and Executive Secretary Truong Thi Mai. He will also meet with Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. He will also lay wreaths to the monument to heroes and Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in Hanoi.
Among the issues Medvedev plans to discuss with the Vietnamese leadership will be regional cooperation and the situation in Ukraine. Special attention will be focused on issues of the expansion of trade-and-economic and humanitarian cooperation. The Russia side also hopes for strengthening interparty ties both bilaterally and within multilateral formats. Apart from that, the Russian hopes that Vietnam will joint the Forum of Campaigners Against Modern Practices of Neocolonialism.
Issues od trade and economic cooperation will be high on the agenda of Medvedev’s meetings in Vietnam. Due to the Western sanctions, bilateral trade dropped by more than a third last year, from seven to 4.569 billion US dollars. Export decreased by 42.7%, to 1.279 billion US dollars and import declined by 32.8%, to 3.290 billion US dollars. Negative trends continued into 2023. According to the Russian Federal Customs Service, Russian-Vietnamese trade in January 2023 was 304.6 million US dollars, or by 44.7% down on January 2022. Russia’s export to Vietnam was 45 million US dollars (minus 71.8%) and import from Vietnam stood at 259.6 million US dollars (minus 33.6%).
Medvedev is expected to touch upon issues of the use of national currencies, possible use of Russian Mir cards in Vietnam. Special attention will be paid to cooperation in the energy sector, the project for the construction of a center of nuclear science and technology in Vietnam, transport-related issues, in particular, the resumption of direct regular air service.
Vietnam’s youth demonstrates great interest to receiving education in Russia and this issue will also be discussed by Medvedev in Hanoi.