Vietnam’s Russian arms credits were repaid through Siberian oil profits.

Vietnam had a Russian weapons relationship. The awkward part was paying for it.

On 18 September 2025, The Associated Press reported that Russia and Vietnam had developed a method for settling arms obligations through profits from joint oil and gas ventures rather than open cash transfers through the global banking system. AP said the account was based on internal Vietnamese documents obtained from an official. The arrangement was intended to keep payments moving while avoiding American and other Western sanctions, according to the documents.

The report describes a credit system. Vietnam purchased Russian military equipment on credit from Moscow, including fighter jets, tanks and ships. It then repaid the credit from Vietnam’s share of profits from a joint Vietnam-Russia oil company operating in Siberia. The payment route was not a conventional bank transfer for each defence purchase. Oil revenue became the settlement stream.

The case date in the draft record is 8 September 2023. That is not the publication date of the AP report retrieved here. AP published the detailed account on 18 September 2025 and said the arrangement had first leaked in 2023. The distinction matters because the 2023 material described planning and warnings, while the later report said a 2024 internal document showed the arrangement had been finalised and implemented.

The earlier document came from March 2023. Vietnam’s Finance Ministry warned that arms deals with Russia could expose Vietnam to US sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA. The document also suggested Washington might hold off because it valued Vietnam’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. AP quoted the warning: “because the U.S. has continuously pressured Vietnam to switch to buying U.S. weapons, threatening to sanction Vietnam under CAATSA if Vietnam continues to buy Russian weapons.”

The quotation is a position recorded in an internal Vietnamese document, not an independently established US threat. AP reported that when the 2023 document became public, Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party dismissed it as a Russian fake intended to damage Hanoi’s relationship with Washington. An official familiar with the internal communications told AP that there was no visible rupture when President Joe Biden visited Vietnam in September 2023 to complete a comprehensive strategic partnership.

AP’s later reporting changed the status of the story without removing the dispute. A newer Vietnamese government document from 2024, also obtained by AP, described an arrangement that Russia and Vietnam had finalised and implemented. The documents also contained agreements intended to produce enough funds for future military purchases. AP said the two documents appeared genuine based on embedded metadata, format and classification codes, an assessment attributed to Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project.

The report identified the wider defence relationship. Russia had extended Vietnam $2 billion in credit in 2011 for a deal that included two naval frigates and 64 T-90S tanks. A further $8 billion in credit was associated with a 2023 defence deal involving Su-30 fighter jets and two more frigates. AP reported that Russia had not delivered those items at the time of publication. The figures are credit amounts reported by AP, not proof that all of the money had been drawn or that every item was governed by the same repayment arrangement.

The source also makes clear why Vietnam might need an arrangement of this kind. AP wrote that a decades-long defence relationship with Russia would leave Vietnam dependent on Russian spare parts and other material for years. At the same time, US defence supply had become more relevant after Washington lifted its arms embargo on Vietnam in 2016. The country was therefore managing a Russian support relationship while deepening a strategic relationship with the United States.