Russia will provide 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam in 2021, Vietnamese Minister of National Defense Sen. Lieut. Gen. Phan Van Giang said at his reception for Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Alexey Yurievich Krivoruchko on Saturday morning.

The meeting was held to welcome the latter’s visit to Hanoi to attend the closing ceremony of the Military Medical Relay Race and Sniper Frontier contests within the framework of the 2021 International Army Games.

At the reception, Sen. Lieut. Gen. Giang emphasized that Vietnam and Russia have a long-standing traditional friendship, especially among their people.

The Vietnamese minister affirmed that the Southeast Asian country always attaches great importance to developing a comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia, which is one of the priorities in its diplomatic policy.

Leaders of the two countries have always facilitated the expansion of bilateral defense ties and military technical cooperation in many fields.

Besides, the defense ministries of the two countries have supported each other in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic since its emergence, Giang said.

He thanked Russia for supporting Vietnam with the delivered shipments of Sputnik V vaccine shots and 20 million more doses to arrive in the country in 2021.

The Vietnamese general hailed the vaccine supply as Russia’s good deed for the Vietnamese people and added that he looks forward to more vaccine supports from Russia in the future, given the complicated development of the pandemic in the Southeast Asian country.

Giang also highly appreciated the results that the two countries have reaped from their bilateral defense cooperation over the past time, especially in terms of high-level delegation exchange, training, military-technical cooperation, unit-level cooperation, and coordination at regional mechanisms and forums.

He affirmed that Vietnam supports the organization of and pledges to participate in the annual International Army Games, as well as highly appreciating the personal initiatives of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation on the Games, which has helped increase the participating military teams’ capacity.

For his part, Deputy Minister Alexey Yurievich Krivoruchko congratulated the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense for successfully hosting the Military Medical Relay Race and Sniper Frontier contests.

The Vietnamese team respectively won a silver and a gold medal prize at the two events on Friday.

The Russian defense leader also expected that Vietnam will attend the 2022 International Army Games.

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