During the meeting, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said, in part: “I will allow myself to deviate from protocol and tell you as a friend of Vietnam – we have not wasted our time, and our relations have gone from very good to excellent.”

Mr Medvedev mentioned Moscow and Hanoi’s cooperation on military-technical issues, nuclear power engineering, humanities and culture. He presented Mr Truong Tan Sang with a four-volume collection of writings by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Vietnamese.

Mr Truong Tan Sang emphasised the importance of Soviet and later Russian assistance to Vietnam and noted Russia’s role in the world arena.