Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday held talks with his Vietnamese counterpart General Phan Van Giang and announced that India will gift an indigenously-built missile corvette INS Kirpan to the Vietnamese Navy. A Defence Ministry statement said the two sides reviewed the progress of various bilateral defence cooperation initiatives and expressed satisfaction with ongoing engagements. The Ministers identified means to enhance existing areas of collaboration, especially in the fields of defence industry cooperation, maritime security and multinational cooperation. The two sides have been focused on further boosting bilateral defence ties and reviewing the situation in the South China Sea, a region that has witnessed growing Chinese assertiveness. Singh announced that the gifting of the indigenously-built in-service missile corvette INS Kirpan will be a milestone in enhancing the capabilities of the Vietnam People’s Navy. Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan and other top officials from the Ministry of Defence were present during the talks. General Giang arrived in India on 18 June on a two-day visit.
As part of his engagements, the defence minister of Vietnam visited the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) headquarters and discussed ways to enhance defence industrial capabilities by cooperation in defence research and joint production. Earlier in the day, he laid a wreath at the National War Memorial and paid homage to fallen heroes. General Giang is also scheduled to visit Agra. The Defence Ministry said Vietnam is an “important partner” in India’s Act East Policy and the Indo-Pacific region.
Relations between the two countries were elevated to the level of “strategic partnership” during the visit of Vietnam’s then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to India in July 2007. In 2016, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Vietnam, bilateral relations were further elevated to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”. With India stressing on its Act East policy, Vietnam has emerged as a key partner, and defence engagements between the two nations include wide-ranging contacts between the services, military-to-military exchanges, capacity building, and training programmes.
During Rajnath Singh’s visit to Vietnam in June 2022, a joint vision statement on the India-Vietnam defence partnership and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on mutual logistics support was inked.