President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Vietnam on Saturday, for a visit that 
Medvedev said he was expecting “serious results” from the trip, which is aimed at establishing wider energy ties.
Referring to close links between the Soviet Union and Vietnam in the 1980s, Medvedev said he hoped their shared history would provide a firm foundation for a tight, modern-day economic and political partnership.
“We were together with the heroic Vietnamese people, during the years of its fight for independence and reunification, during the complicated period of reviving its national economy,” he wrote in an article for the Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan, the text of which was released by the Kremlin.
The president is scheduled to meet top Vietnamese officials on Sunday and agree on the construction of Vietnam’s first nuclear power plant.
Russia is locked in a global race with competitors like the United States, Japan and France to clinch lucrative worldwide contracts as demand for nuclear energy increases.
Apart from the nuclear power plant, Russia and Vietnam are scheduled to sign a raft of agreements, on cooperation in hydro-electric energy, customs and other areas.
Ties with Vietnam date back to the Soviet era when the communist Soviet Union became the country’s main benefactor, after the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
Following the Soviet collapse in 1991 Vietnam was left without the Soviet Union’s ideological, economic and military support and ties have long remained only a shadow of Cold War levels.
Before the start of the state visit, Medvedev will participate on saturday, in a summit with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Hanoi.