President Vladimir V. Putin’s state visit to North Korea appeared to have a singular focus on military matters: The two sides dramatically revived a Cold War-era mutual defense agreement. A day later, in Vietnam, the Russian leader was much less provocative.
Vietnam values its relations with the United States, which would be in jeopardy if Putin made vehement statements about Washington on its soil. So while Vietnam and Russia have deep military relations and a shared communist history, leaders in Hanoi focused talks with Putin on boosting ties in areas such as trade, education, energy and science and technology. The Russian leader kept his formal comments silent.
There were no major breakthroughs, but the show of unity with Vietnam was designed to give Putin a veneer of international legitimacy at a time of growing isolation in the West.
Here are three key takeaways from your visit.
It was a kind of diplomatic show for Putin.
Unlike North Korea, which is a pariah in the West, Vietnam has been courted by the United States in its effort to contain China’s growing global influence. In the past year alone, Hanoi also hosted President Biden and China’s top leader Xi Jinping.
Putin’s visit to Vietnam is part of an effort by the Russian leader to show that, despite Western attempts to isolate him over his invasion of Ukraine, world leaders still accept him. His trip late last year to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two key U.S. partners in the Middle East, underscored this point.
He received a 21-gun salute at the Thang Long Imperial Citadel, an important historical site in the center of the capital. As is usual in the script, Vietnamese schoolchildren, waving Russian and Vietnamese flags, lined the streets of Hanoi as Putin’s motorcade passed by. It was Putin’s fifth trip to the country since 2001, but the first since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Vietnam and Russia share a long history linked by ideology. In 1950, the Soviet Union was one of the first countries to grant diplomatic recognition to what was then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam.
Nguyen Phu Trong, the powerful head of the Vietnamese Communist Party, told Putin that, as someone who had lived and studied in Russia, he still fondly remembers “this great and beautiful country of Russia, with warm feelings,” according to Tuoi Tre of Vietnam. newspaper.
For decades, Moscow became Vietnam’s biggest donor, providing military aid as Hanoi fought its wars against France and the United States, a fact Putin was at pains to remind Vietnamese people on Thursday.
“The Soviet Union, as you noted, provided effective assistance in the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people against the French and then American invaders, and subsequently contributed to the peaceful construction of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” said Putin, as representative of Vietnam. Next to him was Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Vietnam has stopped short of expressing support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, but it has also been careful not to alienate Moscow.
Last weekend, Hanoi skipped the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland. He also abstained on four United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine and voted against the motion to remove Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
Putin’s rhetoric was muted in Hanoi.
Unlike his meeting the day before with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Putin, in public, held back on fiery anti-U.S. rhetoric.
On Wednesday, sitting across from Kim, he criticized Washington as a hegemonic and imperial power trying to impose its will on the world through its satellite countries. He signed a defense pact promising to help North Korea in the event of war and threatened deeper cooperation with Kim’s military.
In Vietnam, the Russian leader stuck to uncontroversial statements about trade and historical relations. The message seemed to be calibrated with his Vietnamese counterparts in mind.
Vietnam, which improved ties with the United States last year, has been careful about the optics of Putin’s visit. Before his trip, officials in Washington made clear they were not happy, saying that no country “should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and allow him to normalize his atrocities.”
Vietnamese media has focused the visit on the bilateral relationship and their long history as friends during the Cold War era.
“Regardless of what Russia may offer, I don’t think Vietnam will rush to give the impression or appearance that we are aligned with Russia on an anti-Western front,” said Hoang Thi Ha, senior researcher at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak. Institute in Singapore.
Although Russia has long supplied weapons to Vietnam, there was little public talk of arms acquisition or defense. Putin’s new defense minister, Andrei R. Belousov, accompanied the Russian leader to North Korea but later appeared to abandon the trip, and Russia’s Defense Ministry released images of him touring a military health complex in Russia on Thursday. .
For Vietnam, it was a demonstration of its “bamboo diplomacy.”
Hanoi says its highest level of bilateral ties is with seven countries: Russia, China, the United States, India, South Korea and Australia. Maintaining ties with one allows you to counteract the others.
Both Russia and Vietnam have benefited greatly from the exploitation of Vietnam’s oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea. Putin pledged to supply oil and gas products to Vietnam in the long term.
Huong Le Thu, deputy Asia director of the International Crisis Group, said Putin’s visit was a sign of Vietnam’s ability to “maintain a relationship with all actors, despite the rivalry and mutual competition between great powers.”
Trong, the party chief, calls this approach “bamboo diplomacy,” in which, by displaying the flexibility of bamboo branches, the country is able to balance multiple relationships with major powers.
“It focuses on Hanoi’s interests, rather than anyone else’s,” Ms. Huong said.