Dr. Kobelev, born in 1938 in Ulyanovsk, was among the first Soviet scholars to specialise in Vietnam. As a former TASS correspondent during the war in Vietnam, he worked closely with Vietnamese institutions and later helped found Russia’s Centre for Vietnamese and ASEAN Studies.

An international seminar titled "Current issues in Vietnam studies” took place at the Centre for Vietnam and ASEAN Studies (CVAS) of the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia under the Russian Academy of Sciences on October 23.