Min Aung Hlaing Wraps Vietnam Visit, Lifts Defense Ties — SkimNews
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- Min Aung Hlaing concluded a three-day visit to Vietnam, meeting with President To Lam and Prime Minister Le Minh Hung; both sides agreed to elevate defense and security cooperation to a "key pillar" of bilateral ties — covering military training, young officer exchanges, search-and-rescue, disaster response, and information sharing on crimes.
- Min Aung Hlaing met with Vietnamese firms including VinFast and the military-run telecoms group Viettel, which operates Mytel — one of Myanmar's major telecom operators.
- Two-way trade between Myanmar and Vietnam fell from $853 million in 2020 to $590 million in 2025, per AP-cited statistics, as Myanmar's civil conflict deepened.
- Speaking at the Myanmar-Vietnam Business Forum in Hanoi, Min Aung Hlaing called for greater Vietnamese investment and specifically sought cooperation in telecommunications, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, tourism, and human resources development.
- Both sides reaffirmed a commitment not to allow any individual or organization to use one country's territory against the other — the same arrangement To Lam made with Thailand during his May visit.
- Vietnam was the eighth country Min Aung Hlaing has visited since taking office in April and the third ASEAN member state, with Cambodia to follow later this week; he has also visited India, China, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
- Myanmar has been excluded from ASEAN summits since late 2021 for failing to implement the bloc's Five-Point Consensus on conflict resolution — a plan Min Aung Hlaing's government has rejected "in both word and deed."
Why it matters: Vietnam's explicit endorsement of Min Aung Hlaing's 'significant results in national governance' gives the junta a diplomatic foothold in its ASEAN reintegration campaign — but it also exposes the bloc's divisions, since Hanoi is publicly backing a leader whom ASEAN excluded over the Five-Point Consensus. Trade is still a fraction of pre-coup levels, so the deeper play here is legitimacy, not commerce.
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