HANOI, June 20. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin begins his state visit to Vietnam.
While in Hanoi, he will hold talks with Vietnamese President To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Tr·ng, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, and parliament speaker Tran Thanh Man.
The talks are expected to focus on issues of partnership between Moscow and Hanoi and will yield a number of bilateral documents.
The visit’s program
The main program will begin at about noon local time and will begin with the official welcoming ceremony. After that, the two countries’ presidents will hold talks, exchange inked documents and come up with statements for the media.
The package of agreements to be signed includes around 20 documents on cooperation in various spheres. The sides will adopt a joint statement to reiterate principles of comprehensive strategic partnership between the countries. Some of the documents will be signed in the presence of the presidents.
Later in the day, the Russian president will meet with the Vietnamese prime minister at the working breakfast. According to Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov, "various economic topics will be raised" during this meeting.
After the working breakfast, Putin is scheduled to speak with the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, who invited the Russian leader to visit his country. Later, as prescribed by the local protocol, Putin will lay wreaths to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Memorial to the Fallen Heroes.
After that, the Russian president will meet with Vietnam’s parliament speaker. This round of talks will be followed by a meeting with the alumni of Soviet universities. Around 75,000 Vietnamese specialists have received education at Russian universities. The general secretary of the Vietnamese Community Party studied at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1980s. Currently, some 3,000 Vietnamese students are studying in Russia.
A reception on behalf of the Vietnamese president will be the final event of the visit. However, it is not ruled out that the Russian president will speak to journalists before leaving Vietnam.
Comprehensive cooperation
Cooperation between Moscow and Hanoi is developing dynamically in various areas. Thus, bilateral trade went up by more than eight percent last year alone and reached $5 billion. The growth continues this year. Russia’s key exports are mineral products, coal, agricultural produce, and its imports include textiles, coffee, telephones, and component to them.
The two countries are cooperating in such sectors as energy, machine-building, medicine, farming. Such Russian companies as Gazprom, Zarubezhneft, Novatek, and Rosatom are implementing projects in Vietnam, which has a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
Vietnam is an attractive destination for Russian vacationers. Thus, some 40,000 Russians visited that country in 2022 and 125,000 - in 2023.
Russia also maintains close coordination with Vietnam within international organizations and associations, including the United Nations. "Russia’s and Vietnam’s approaches to many global and regionals problems are either identical or very close," the Kremlin aide said.
Apart from that, the two countries are developing cultural and humanitarian cooperation. Days of Vietnamese Culture will be held in Moscow and St. Petersburg from July 1 through 7.
New level of relations
Putin’s visit has the status of a state visit, the highest possible under the diplomatic protocol.
Putin arrived in Hanoi from Pyongyang, where he held talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On his way to North Korea, the Russian president made a stopover in Russia’s Siberian Republic of Yakutia.
This is Putin’s fifth visit to Vietnam. He visited this country in 2001, 2006, 2013, and 2017. The current visit, according to the Kremlin, demonstrates the advanced, decades-long nature of relations between the two countries, which mark the 30th anniversary of the fundamental Treaty on the Friendly Relations between the countries (was signed on June 16, 1994).