Russia’s war in Ukraine challenges old comrades in Southeast Asia

 Russia’s war in Ukraine challenges old comrades in Southeast Asia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has oozed a casual resentment when describing the “irreversible and even tectonic changes” that he says have led the West to become a spent force in the world.

“Western countries are striving to maintain a former world order that is beneficial only to them,” he told attendees at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Russian city of Vladivostok in September.

The future was in the “dynamic, promising countries and regions of the world, primarily the Asia Pacific region”, he said. Putin was followed on the podium by Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing – the symbolism was not lost on close observers of regional politics.

This week Putin was invited to attend the Group of 20 meeting, which opened on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali. It appeared to be the perfect venue for him to double down on his overtures to the Asia Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia — one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions.

Putin skipped his moment in the Balinese sun due to undefined “scheduling” reasons.

With Putin a no-show, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a captive audience when he addressed the summit virtually on Tuesday after his invitation to attend by the summit’s host, Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Putin’s absence from the G20 undercuts “talk of a Russian pivot to Asia”, wrote Susannah Patton of the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.

Now with the Russian army retreating in parts of Ukraine and international sanctions biting deeply into Russia’s economy, some old friends in Southeast Asia appear to be avoiding direct eye contact as Putin looks east. Others are actively looking the other way, and Myanmar seems to be Moscow’s last true friend in the region.

Hanoi, in particular, remembers Russian support during the war against the US-backed regime in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s — a war from which it emerged victorious in 1975.

Vietnam and Laos abstained from UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Ukrainian territory, and voted against suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.

In Monday’s vote on a resolution requiring Russia to pay reparations for the damage caused to Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were among the 73 members of the assembly that abstained. Among countries in the region, only Singapore and the Philippines backed the resolution.

Vietnam’s decision to abstain at the UN is perfectly legal, argued Huynh Tam Sang, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities. But it is also “morally questionable” as Vietnam had failed to defend the “principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he writes. That is no small oversight for a country whose successful liberation struggles against foreign occupiers — China, France, and the United States — is a defining national motif.

“Vietnam’s move is aimed at avoiding criticism and potential retaliation from Moscow,” said Huynh Tam Sang, pointing out the material behind the fraternal: trade links between Hanoi and Moscow amounted to almost $2.5bn in the first eight months of this year, and Russia is a primary investor in Vietnam’s oil and gas sectors.

Russia is also Vietnam’s largest arms supplier.

“It is not in Vietnam’s interests for Russia to be weakened,” Carlyle A Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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