MOSCOW, April 2. /TASS/. Russia will gift Vietnam a research vessel and open a regional center for the study of the Russian language in Hanoi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced.
"We highly value the long-term cooperation in the fields of science, education, and personnel training, and think it is important to carry out a project on creating a center for nuclear science and technology in Vietnam, as well as ensure stable operation of the Joint Vietnam-Russia Tropical Science and Technology Research Center. Russia is preparing to donate a research vessel to the center to support the implementation of its programs," Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Vietnam Bui Thanh Son.
Moscow supports the training of Vietnamese students in Russian universities, Lavrov emphasized. "People are greatly interested in getting an education in our country and in the Russian language in general. We have allocated a thousand scholarships for Vietnamese citizens at the expense of the federal budget for the current academic year, and all of them are being used," the Russian foreign minister noted.
According to the top Russian diplomat, "work on establishing a Russian school in Hanoi is ongoing." "We are also planning to create a regional center for the study of the Russian language in Southeast Asia on the basis of the existing Hanoi branch of the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute," Lavrov announced. In his opinion, "this will be a very important step in strengthening ties with Vietnam and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in general."