BAKU — A visa-free regime between Vietnam and Azerbaijan is now on the agenda, but only as one line on a list. Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan and President Ilham Aliyev discussed it in Baku on Wednesday, along with trade, transport and logistics, renewable energy, tourism and investment, according to the Azerbaijani presidency’s account of the meeting.
Vo Thi Anh Xuan was in the Azerbaijani capital for the Baku CICA summit, the gathering of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. Aliyev thanked her for Vietnam’s support for extending Azerbaijan’s chairmanship of the organization. She congratulated him on what she called a successful chairmanship and on hosting the summit.
The visa line is the item most likely to touch ordinary travelers, and it is also the vaguest. Neither side is quoted setting a date, a scope or a condition. What the readout does offer is a reminder of how far the relationship has been described as moving: Aliyev spoke of the “strategic partnership” between the two countries, a status the two governments adopted during Vietnamese Communist Party chief To Lam’s visit to Baku in May 2025.
Energy got the most specific language. According to the presidency’s readout, the sides “noted the signing” of a memorandum of understanding between the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, known as SOCAR, and PetroVietnam, and discussed ways to deepen the partnership. The readout does not say when it was signed or what it covers. Interfax reported that an agreement of that name was among the documents exchanged in May 2025, but Vietnamese outlets covering the same ceremony described the PetroVietnam memorandum as one with Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Economy, not SOCAR. TEH could not reconcile the two accounts.
The conversation also leaned on history. Vo Thi Anh Xuan recalled that thousands of Vietnamese students studied in Azerbaijan in the Soviet era and thanked Azerbaijan for support in restoring Vietnam’s energy sector and training its personnel after its struggle for independence. She also thanked the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, led by First Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva, for humanitarian and cultural projects in Vietnam.
Another meeting on the summit’s margins ended the same way. The Azerbaijan Laos trade talks a day earlier also left no trade figure in any account.
The presidency’s account is the only one TEH found for this meeting; no Vietnamese readout had surfaced. Until Baku or Hanoi names a date for the visa decision, a figure for trade, or a text for the memorandum, the strategic partnership is a phrase both sides are willing to repeat. What would change for a traveler between Hanoi and Baku is still unwritten.
