Russian President Vladimir Putin [Source: Reuters]

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin praised Vietnam for its “balanced” stance on the Ukraine war and listed progress on payments, energy and trade in an opinion piece published on Wednesday in the newspaper of Vietnam’s Communist Party.

In the piece timed for Putin’s state visit to Vietnam, he applauded the Southeast Asian Communist-ruled country for supporting “a pragmatic way to solve the crisis” in Ukraine, in comments published in the Nhan Dan newspaper.

Vietnam, which officially pursues a neutral foreign policy in its relations with major world powers, has abstained from condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine, a position that Western countries have considered as too close to the Kremlin.

Putin is due to arrive in Hanoi overnight, and plans to meet Vietnamese leaders on Thursday, on the heels of a trip to North Korea.

The Russian leader, who is making his first visit to Vietnam since 2017 when he attended an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, said Russia and Vietnam also shared “similar assessments of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Vietnam’s position on the South China Sea differs from that of China which claims the strategic waterway almost entirely as its own, including gas and oil fields in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone where Russian companies extract oil and gas.