The Strategic Partnership between the Russia and Vietnam is a natural result of decades-long fruitful collaboration between the two countries, according to a Russian diplomat.

The Vietnam-Russia relations upgraded to strategic partnership 20 years ago. Photo: Vietnam Briefing

Maria Zakharova made the statement on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the bilateral strategic partnership, saying that the relations over the past 20 years has achieved impressive results.

The declaration of the diplomatic relationship, which was signed in Hanoi on March 1, 2001, materialized the Russian and Vietnamese peoples’ wish to progressively strengthen their intergovernmental relations based on many years of friendship and mutually advantageous cooperation,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.

She named the milestone is “historic” and marks the cooperation in a variety of fields and showed the two countries’ determination to expand bilateral ties in the new historical conditions on the basis of their rich experience of interaction accumulated over the previous period of time.

Political dialog at the top and high levels has become regular. The cooperation in the trade, economic, military, military-technical, scientific, technological and humanitarian spheres has got an additional impetus.

Meanwhile, inter-parliamentary and interparty exchanges as well as inter-regional contacts have become more active.

“We have developed new cooperation mechanisms which enable more efficient interaction so as to find ways of solving pressing issues concerning bilateral affairs and close coordination on the international arena. It is indicative that our strategic partnership became comprehensive by mutual consent in 2012,” the spokeswoman stressed.

She highlighted the solidarity and unchanging mutual support, typical in the two countries’ joint efforts in containing the spread of the novel coronavirus infection.

Russia and Vietnam have been offering each other the necessary consultative and methodological assistance while their specialized institutions are engaged in a dialogue on a whole range of matters in fighting against Covid-19 pandemic, constantly exchanging experience in combating this dangerous disease, Maria Zakharova said.

Today, notwithstanding a complex situation in the region and the world, increased turbulence and radical changes in the entire system of international relations, the all-round strategic partnership between Russia and Vietnam based on many years of experience of fruitful cooperation remains an important part of Russian foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region, she noted.