Vietnam is the eight largest weapons buyer; its defense budget ($4.3 billion in 2014) and military spending are increasing.

“Thanks to its growing military budget and its strained relations with China, Vietnam has become a major Russian weapons buyer” in recent years, Richard Weitz wrote for the National Interest. In addition, Hanoi “has arguably been Russia’s closest strategic partner in Southeast Asia,” he added. Soldiers parade in front of the mausoleum of late president Ho Chi Minh, founder of today”s communist Vietnam, as the communist regime celebrates its 70th anniversary in Hanoi on September 2, 2015.

This trend, many agree, will likely remain intact. “Russia has always been willing to get them whatever they required,” Collin Koh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore told Bloomberg. “Vietnam is not going to want to jeopardize that relationship.”