The legal framework includes more than eighty interstate treaties, intergovernmental agreements and protocols concluded after 1991. The fundamental document, the Treaty on the Principles of Friendly Relations between the Countries, which replaced the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1978, entered into force on April 11, 1995. New benchmarks for cooperation were laid down in the Declaration on Strategic Partnership between the Russian Federation and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam signed during the first official visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Vietnam on February 28, 2001. In July 2012, during the official visit of Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang to Moscow, it was decided to raise relations between the two countries to the level of strategic partnership.
Russian-Vietnamese relations are actively developing along the inter-parliamentary and interparty lines, and close working contacts are maintained between ministries, departments and regions. The Intergovernmental Russian-Vietnamese Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation acts as a coordinating body for trade and investment cooperation.
Russian-Vietnamese military-technical cooperation has a history of more than half a century, but since 1992 it has been conducted on a commercial basis, whereas previously supplies were carried out mainly as a grant aid.
A joint intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation has been working since 1998.
Rostec State Corporation has a representative office in Vietnam that ensures Rosoboronexport's interests.
