Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea on June 18–19 and Vietnam on June 19–20, 2024, to discuss strategic partnerships, trade, and military cooperation.

Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Russia in September 2023 as a reciprocal visit. Following the Russian leader’s visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on June 18–19, Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has invited the leader to make a state visit to Vietnam on June 19–20.

North Korea and Vietnam are two extremely potential and strategically significant partner states that President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit as part of Russia’s aggressive effort to strengthen mutually beneficial ties with its Asian allies.

North Korea

Assisting the president, Yury Ushakov, told reporters on Monday that the Russian president’s journey to Pyongyang is expected to be “very intensive.”

He clarified the visit’s schedule as well.

• On June 18, Putin is scheduled to arrive in Pyongyang late at night. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, newly appointed Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chief of Roscosmos Yuri Borisov, Transport Minister Roman Starovoit, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, Environment and Natural Resources Minister Alexander Kozlov, General Director of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov, and Governor of Primorsky Territory Oleg Kozhemyako will be among the Russian delegation.
• The formal visit’s substantial portion is scheduled for June 19. The president will be present at a gala concert honoring Putin’s visit, as well as a march at Kim Il Sung Square. The Liberation Monument in Pyongyang, which was built as a memorial by the Korean people to honor the Soviet soldiers who lost their lives defending their homeland in 1945, will have a wreath placed at its base.
• There will be a speech exchanged at the state reception in Putin’s honor.
• The agenda for the day includes tete-a-tete talks and expanded bilateral negotiations between the president of North Korea and the visiting president of Russia.
• The topics of discussion between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin will include interregional ties, security concerns, collaboration on the global stage, and matters related to the economy, energy, transportation, agriculture, education, and culture.
• It is anticipated that trade will be a major theme. The mutual trade turnover reached $34.4 million in 2023, a nine-fold increase, and the parties intend to maintain this trend.
• A pertinent order that was posted on the official legal information web on Tuesday states that Putin has approved the proposal made by the Russian Foreign Ministry to sign a strategic collaboration agreement with North Korea.
• Putin and Kim Jong Un will discuss the outcomes of the negotiations with the media.
• Following negotiations, the North Korean leader will go with Putin to the airport, stopping along the way to visit Jangbaeksan Cathedral (Holy Trinity Cathedral), the only Russian Orthodox cathedral in North Korea.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, paid North Korea, with which the USSR had first established diplomatic ties in 1948, his first official visit in July 2000. Since then, ties between the two nations have been sparked by a geopolitical environment that is changing quickly.

The leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un visited Russia in September 2023 and spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister at the time, and Kim also met. That visit to Russia solidified “the traditional ties of good neighbor and cooperation” between the two nations and brought about “a new radical turn” in the evolution of Moscow-Pyongyang relations. The topics covered by the parties ranged from Russian assistance for North Korea’s satellite program to military-technological collaboration.

Before his state visit, Putin told the North Korean daily Rodong Sinmun that Moscow “highly appreciated the DPRK’s unwavering support for Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine… willingness to defend our common priorities and views within the UN.”

The Russian president approved a proposal to sign a strategic partnership agreement with North Korea before to the visit from the country’s foreign ministry.

“To accept the proposal of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, agreed with interested federal government bodies and organizations, to sign a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Russia and North Korea. To allow the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during negotiations on the signing of the said treaty, to make changes to its draft that are not of a fundamental nature,” the document reads.

The nations intend to enhance mutual tourism, cultural exchanges, education, healthcare, sports, infrastructure for communication and transportation, and humanitarian cooperation. Alternative commerce and mutual settlement processes that are “not controlled by the West” are significant additional issues.

The possibility of using North Korean labor outside of Russia’s Far East has also supposedly been discussed.

North Korea and Russia intend to discuss potential areas of strategic collaboration while taking the existing state of affairs in the world and the development of the Washington-Tokyo-Seoul alliance into consideration. The three nations held their first-ever cooperative exercises last fall and inked a trilateral security agreement at Camp David in August. North Korea, China, and Russia have all voiced concerns over US efforts to militarize the Asia-Pacific region.

In keeping with their customary aggressive language, Western officials have expressed their “concerns” on the eve of Putin’s visit to Pyongyang. Due to this, Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Kremlin, emphasized Russia’s right to work with the DPRK and highlighted the enormous potential for the growth of bilateral relations.

Sanctions that Russia also voted for have somewhat hampered the development of collaboration with the DPRK. However, in a recent development, Russia declared that it would not consent to the reinstatement of a UN Security Council mechanism for applying sanctions against North Korea. A US draft resolution to prolong the term of UN Security Council Committee 1718’s sanctions against North Korea by a year was rejected by Russia on March 28. Its mandate ended on April 30.

Vietnam

This will be Vladimir Putin’s first trip to Vietnam since 2017. Vietnam’s foreign policy prioritizes its connection with Russia, as noted by Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong when he extended an invitation to the Russian leader to visit the nation in March.

• Putin’s visit to Hanoi will be celebrated with a ceremonial ceremony on June 19 when the Russian leader arrives.
• The Vietnamese Communist Party’s Central Committee General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, President To Lam, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, and National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man will all meet with the Russian president.
• Topics related to the economy will be discussed during the working breakfast meeting with the prime minister of Vietnam.
• Initiatives to strengthen bilateral cooperation in fields like security and defense, commerce and economics, culture, and tourism are expected to be discussed in the next bilateral discussions.
• Along with laying wreaths at the Monument to Fallen Heroes in Hanoi, Putin will also meet with graduates of Russian and Soviet colleges.
• It is anticipated that a joint statement affirming the fundamentals of future cooperation between the two nations will be adopted as a result of the visit. It is anticipated that roughly 20 documents on cooperative efforts will be signed.

1950 saw the establishment of diplomatic ties between Vietnam and Russia, which were upgraded to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2012. The Soviet Union was Vietnam’s principal trading partner throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, the Biden administration has courted the nation as part of a larger “pivot to Asia,” with key nations like China and the US making considerable diplomatic gestures towards it.

Hanoi and Moscow maintain their long-standing alliance, actively collaborating in the fields of energy, health, and agriculture. For many years, Vietnam has been Russia’s top customer for weaponry. In 2016, Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) inked a free trade deal.

The amount of trade between Vietnam and Russia increased by more than 8% to $5 billion in 2023, indicating room for greater expansion. Vietnam may see a rise in Russian exports of petroleum products, coal, metals, rubber, different kinds of polyethylene, and agricultural items like soybeans, corn, and wheat.

Products including computers, phones, TVs, electronic integrated circuits, auto parts, pneumatic tires, furniture, shoes, and clothes can all be exported from Vietnam.

According to reports, as of April, Russia had put $984.98 million into 186 Vietnamese projects. According to Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment, Hanoi has spent $1.63 billion in 18 projects in Russia, focusing on industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and oil and gas. By 2025, $10 billion in trade turnover is the intended target between Vietnam and Russia.

The two nations’ ministers met during Russian Energy Week in October 2023 to talk about cooperative oil and gas production, collaboration in the coal and electric power industries, and the refurbishment and development of new electric power facilities in Vietnam. Vietsovpetro, a joint company between Vietnam and Russia for oil and gas exploration, has been successful in managing one of the major oil reserves in Southeast Asia. The parties decided to support both new and ongoing initiatives including Gazprom, Novatek, Rosatom, and PetroVietnam.

Since its founding in 2006, the Vietnam-Russia Joint Bank (VRB) has enabled national currency payments in trade and economic cooperation between the two nations. In 2023, the amount of settlements in national currencies between Vietnam and Russia surged fourfold.

Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin gifted Kim Jong Un a luxury Russian limo made by Aurus after Kim showed keen interest in the vehicle during Putin’s visit last year.