Putin to have talks with visiting Vietnamese leader in Sochi

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on Thursday with Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party Nguen Phu Trong, who is on an official visit to Russia from September 6 through September 8, Russian president’s aide Yuri Ushakov said.

The meeting will be held in Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

"Talks with Vladimir Putin - the central part of the visit - are scheduled for September 6," Ushakov told journalists. Currently, relations are developing quite successfully, being based on years-long traditions of friendship and support.

Thus, according to the official statistics of Russia’s Federal Customs Service, trade between Russia and Vietnam in 2017 grew approximately by 30% to reach 5.2 billion US dollars. January-June 2018 demonstrated a 19% growth, with trade amounting to 2.4 billion US dollars.

"The talks are expected to focus on key issues of the Russian-Vietnamese comprehensive strategic partnership and current regional problems," the Kremlin press service said.

Putin and Nguen Phu Trong have met twice: in Hanoi in November 2013 and in Sochi in the autumn of 2014.

Ushakov recalled that Russia and Vietnam will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the friendship treaty in the coming year and plan to organize cross Years of Russia in Vietnam and of Vietnam in Russia.

"The talks are to yield a joint statement and a number of bilateral documents, both interstate and commercial," the Kremlin aide added.
Vietnam’s expectations

The Vietnamese side expects much from the forthcoming talks. While in Russia, Nguen Phu Trong have already met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and plans to meet with speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house Vyacheslav Volodin, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) Gennady Zyuganov and CEOs of Russian oil and gas companies operating in Vietnam, such as Gazprom, Rosneft and Zarubezhneft.

In an interview with TASS, Nguen Phu Trong said that his visit is geared to strengthen relations of comprehensive strategic partnership and give a fresh impetus to bilateral cooperation in all spheres. "We will discuss in detail with President Vladimir Putin and other Russian top officials the current state of bilateral relations and will outline major cooperation targets and measures to promote interstate partnership in all spheres. We will also exchange views on international topics of mutual interest," he said.

The Vietnamese leader stressed that Russia is an important partner for his country. "Over the seven decades in the history of relations between our states, our nations have always supported and helped each other. The Vietnamese people will never forget the huge material assistance and sincere moral support the former Soviet Union and Russia offered us in the course of our fight for liberation and subsequent peaceful development of our fatherland," he said.

In the recent year, Russia and Vietnam have signed more than 4.5 billion US dollar worth of contracts for supplies of Russian-made defense sector products. The biggest contracts included the one for the purchase of a batch of Russian Su-30MK2 fighter jets estimated at about one billion US dollars and an agreement on the sale of six Russian diesel-electric submarines of Project 636.1 Varshavyanka (NATO reporting name The Kilo) worth about two billion US dollars.

Apart from that, Vietnam invites Russia to take part in the development of its energy sector and promises to offer Russian companies the most favorable terms for participation in projects to modernization of energy sector facilities that were built with the assistance from the former Soviet Union and in projects for the construction of new energy facilities.