Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, on the second stop of his East Asia tour.
travel, This was followed by a lavish visit to North Koreawas interpreted as a sign that Russia still enjoys diplomatic support in the region.
The United States criticized the visit as providing a platform for President Putin to promote his aggressive war against Ukraine.
While Vietnam works to improve relations with Europe and the United States, it still values its historical ties with Russia.
In a small park in Ba Dinh, Hanoi’s political district, stands a five-meter-tall statue of Lenin, depicting the heroic gesture of the Russian revolutionary. Every year on his birthday, a delegation of senior Vietnamese officials solemnly lay flowers and bow in front of the statue, a gift from Russia during the Soviet era.
Vietnam has close ties with Russia dating back decades, with the Soviet Union providing significant military, economic and diplomatic support to the new communist state of North Vietnam in the 1950s.
Vietnam described their relationship as “full of loyalty and gratitude.” After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 and overthrew the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, it was isolated and sanctioned by China and the West, and relied heavily on assistance from the Soviet Union. Many older Vietnamese, including powerful Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, studied in Russia and learned the language.
Today, Vietnam’s economy has been transformed by its integration into global markets. Russia lags far behind China, Asia, the United States and Europe as a trading partner. But Vietnam still mainly uses Russian-made military equipment and relies on partnerships with Rosneft for oil exploration in the South China Sea.
The invasion of Ukraine poses a diplomatic challenge for Vietnam, but one that Vietnam has so far successfully met. It has chosen to abstain from voting on various UN resolutions condemning Russia’s actions but has maintained good relations with Ukraine and even provided some aid to Kyiv. They also have a legacy from the Soviet era. Thousands of Vietnamese work and study in Ukraine.
It’s all consistent with Vietnam’s longstanding foreign policy principle of being friends with all but avoiding all formal alliances—what the Communist leadership now calls “bamboo diplomacy,” bowing to the winds of great power competition rather than being forced to act on both sides. .
This is why Vietnam so readily escalates relations with the United States, with which its older generation of leaders had fought a long, destructive war, to find lucrative markets for Vietnamese exports and balance it with its neighbors close relations with China.
The United States opposes President Putin’s official visit to Vietnam on the grounds that it would undermine international efforts to isolate him, but this should come as no surprise. Aside from its special historical ties to Russia, public sentiment about the war in Ukraine is more ambivalent in Vietnam than in Europe.
There is admiration for Putin as a strongman standing up to the West, but there is also skepticism about U.S. and European claims to uphold international law, driven in part by comments on social media.
The same is true in other Asian countries, where the war in Ukraine is viewed as a distant crisis. For example, Thailand, a historical military ally of the United States that was on the opposite side of Russia during the Cold War, has public opinion that is as divided as Vietnam’s. Thais also value the older ties between their monarchy and pre-revolutionary Russian czars, and the Thai government today maintains close ties with Russia, valuing the contribution of millions of Russians to its tourism industry.
It’s unclear how long Vietnam’s friendship with Vladimir Putin will last. It is already looking for alternative sources of military equipment, but ending its current reliance on Russia will take years.
A recent series of high-level resignations within the Communist Party illustrates the intense internal competition for the next generation of leaders and the country’s future direction. But there is no talk yet of giving up the ambition to be friends with everyone and enemies with no one.
