Vietnam seeks to curb reliance on Russian arms amid Ukraine war

Vietnam is eyeing a major defence shift as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian arms and launch a push to export locally made weapons, officials and analysts said, with possible buyers in Africa, Asia – and potentially even Moscow.

The Southeast Asian nation is one of the world’s 20 biggest buyers of weapons amid on-and-off tensions with China, with an annual budget for arms imports estimated at about US$1 billion and set to grow, according to GlobalData, a provider of military procurement intelligence.

Most of that money has historically gone to Russia, which was for decades Vietnam’s main supplier of weapons and defence systems. That made Vietnam one of the top buyers of Russian arms, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks global military expenditures.

But that is changing as Vietnam strives to become more self-sufficient, obtain advanced gear that Russia cannot provide, and faces Western pressure to reduce arms purchases from Moscow amid its invasion of Ukraine, analysts said.

Instead, Vietnam is turning to suppliers from Europe, East Asia, India, Israel and the United States, according to diplomats, officials and analysts. It has also boosted its domestic military industry with support from Israel and other partners, and hopes to export weapons, analysts and officials said.

Nguyen The Phuong, formerly a defence researcher at Vietnam National University and now at the University of New South Wales, Australia, said there had even been internal discussions in October about whether the country should sell weapons to Russia – although no decision on that was seen as imminent.