Vietnam's To Lam Concludes State Visit to Russia, Departs for France

Vietnam's top leader To Lam yesterday wound up a state visit to Russia during which he and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to develop their cooperation in the realms of trade, energy, and defense. Lam arrived in Russia on Monday for a three-day visit, before departing yesterday for France, where he was scheduled to meet with President Emmanuel Macron and attend the International Space Summit in Paris. During the visit, Lam, who serves both as president and general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), held talks with Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, and other high-ranking officials. Ahead of their meeting, Putin praised Vietnam’s “impressive results” under the CPV’s rule, and said that he was “delighted” to welcome Lam and his delegation to the Kremlin. In turn, the Vietnamese leader described Putin as “a great friend of our country,” and said that Hanoi views its relationship with Moscow as “a priority, a consistent pillar of our foreign policy, and a strategic choice of enduring significance.” Both sides made ample reference to the Cold War-era cooperation between communist North Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Addressing the media after the meeting, Putin described the talks as “very meaningful and substantive” and said that the two sides had signed an “impressive package” of bilateral agreements. These included MoUs in areas such as justice, finance, investment, transport, ethnic affairs, energy, nuclear safety, science and technology, education, and mineral resources, Vietnamese state media reported. Putin said that economics and trade was a particular focus of talks. He noted that while trade had increased by more than 5 percent last year, progress that he attributed to the free trade agreement between Vietnam and the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union, “the overall volume of trade in absolute terms does not yet match the potential.” The two sides agreed to target $15 billion in two-way trade by 2030. Another priority was cooperation in the energy sector, which has been a recent priority for both governments. In a joint statement released yesterday, the two sides described energy as an area of “strategic breakthrough in Vietnam-Russia relations” that would help shore up energy security for both countries. Both sides “agreed to improve the efficiency of ongoing projects and continue to expand cooperation in the oil and gas sector in Vietnam and Russia,” the statement said. It also referenced the March 2026 agreement with Russia that will likely make Vietnam the first Southeast Asian nation to achieve a civilian nuclear energy capacity, stating that it had “opened a new chapter” in the two countries’ partnership. Specifically, Vietnam’s state energy firm Petrovietnam signed a framework agreement with the Russian state-owned oil and gas company Zarubezhneft on ‌cooperation in a project to set up a strategic oil reserve in Vietnam. “The Russian side has proposed that its partners ​consider the idea of jointly establishing ​strategic fuel reserves in Vietnam,” Putin ‌told the media after his meeting with Lam. “Our companies are also interested in establishing transit energy supplies through Vietnamese territory to neighboring countries.” Lam said that Vietnam “welcomes more active investment by Russian corporations and enterprises in the development of renewable energy, oil and gas sector and the development of deep-sea resources.” He added that the Russian side would strive to “create favorable conditions for Vietnamese enterprises to expand their investment and business activities in Russia in such areas as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and seafood.” Above all, Lam’s visit testifies to the energy that Vietnam has invested in its foreign partnerships since he took over the leadership of the CPV just over two years ago. In that time, Lam has paid official visits to China, Russia, Belarus, India, and Cuba, as well as the U.S., France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, and regional partners including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. He has also spearheaded a rapid expansion of Vietnam’s circle of Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships, welcoming France (October 2024), Malaysia (November 2024), New Zealand (February 2025), Indonesia (March 2025), Singapore (March 2025), Thailand (May 2025), the U.K. (October 2025), and the European Union (January 2026) to the top tier of Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy. In recent weeks, Lam supplemented this to state visits to Australia and New Zealand and met with Myanmar’s President Min Aung Hlaing in Hanoi. According to Reuters, he is also expected to address the U.N. General Assembly in New York later this month, and to make a state visit to Canada. In October, the news agency added, the Vietnamese leader “is expected to return to Europe, where he could meet ​EU leaders in Brussels as part of a broader trip, according to three people informed about the plans.” The varied political hue of Vietnam’s key partnership, and its ability to maintain good relationships with them is the essence of its doctrine of “bamboo diplomacy.” Judging by Lam’s crowded travel schedule, Hanoi is doubling down on this approach as the world enters a period of global perturbation and flux.