Russia: US likely to establish bases near Afghanistan

“Well aware of the Americans’ intrusiveness, I do not rule out that they will be pressing for the same aim from different sides. I’ve heard that they have been trying to persuade India to grant the Pentagon some opportunities on the Indian territory,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel in an interview.

Lavrov recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin told his US counterpart Joe Biden at the Geneva summit in July “Russia is categorically against attempts to conclude agreements with the Central Asian countries on the deployment of US military infrastructure on their territory with the aim of delivering so-called over-the-horizon strikes against targets in Afghan territory.”

Lavrov stressed that such proposals from the United States had also been received by Pakistan, which rejected them, and by Uzbekistan, which stated in public that its Constitution left no room for any actions like the deployment of foreign bases in its territory.

“Kyrgyzstan, too, as represented by its president, said it does not wish this, either,” Lavrov added.

On October 27, Russia’s FM in a video message urged Afghanistan’s neighbors to prevent US and NATO military presence on their territories.

The Taliban movement, driven out of Kabul by the forces of the Northern Alliance with support from the US-led international coalition in November 2001, launched a large-scale operation twenty years later for control of Afghanistan after Washington in the spring of 2021 unveiled plans for curtailing its military mission. On August 15, the radicals entered Kabul without encountering any resistance. President Ashraf Ghani stepped down and left the country.

The Taliban on September 6 announced the whole territory of Afghanistan was under their control. On September 7, they unveiled the composition of an interim government.