Russia is accused of beheading Ukrainian soldiers

Putin will visit Hanoi for two days after his trip to North Korea, according to state media, a move that has angered the United States – Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. reports Sarah Newey from Bangkok.

“No country should provide Putin with a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalize his atrocities,” a spokesman for the American embassy in Hanoi told Reuters this week. “Allowing him to travel freely could normalize Russia’s blatant violations of international law.”

But this attitude contradicts the general mood in the Southeast Asian country. In the capital, a city full of striking Soviet-style buildings and statues, many were eagerly awaiting the Russian president’s visit.

“I was very happy when I learned that Mr Putin was coming to Vietnam because he is very talented, a true world leader,” 57-year-old Tran Xuan Cuong told Reuters. Photographer Nguyen Duy Khanh, 34, added: “Mr Putin is a very talented and powerful president and he is really my idol.”

Moscow has long maintained close relations with communist-ruled Vietnam. During the Cold War, thousands of people from the Southeast Asian country traveled to the former Soviet Union to study – including the head of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong.

Russia has also historically been Hanoi’s largest arms supplier and continues to produce oil and gas from Vietnamese fields in the disputed South China Sea.