Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Hanoi for two-day visit
VOV.VN - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov flew to Hanoi on July 5 for a two-day visit to Vietnam to mark the 10th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between Vietnam and Russia.
The visit was made at the invitation of Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam.
Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic and trade cooperation between Vietnam and Russia maintained a positive growth momentum with two-way trade in 2020 reaching nearly US$4.85 billion. In 2021, the bilateral trade figure rose to US$7.1 billion, an increase of more than 25% year-on-year.
In an interview granted to Russia’s Independence newspaper, Grigory Lokshin, a leading researcher at the Institute of the Far East of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted Vietnam is important for Russia as a support for stable ties between the whole Russia and its Far East region with Southeast Asia.
According to the Russian researcher, cooperation in military engineering and joint development of oil and gas projects play an important role in bilateral relations and have always been the main topic of discussions of the two governments. Russian companies producing oil and gas at shallow depths provide a significant part of Vietnam’s energy needs.
Vietnam and Russia upgraded their relations to a Strategic Partnership in 2001 and a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2012.
During President Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s official visit to Russia last year, the two countries issued a joint statement on the Vision of their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to 2030.