As Russia’s relationship with the West has deteriorated, the Kremlin’s view of the Taliban has changed. But substantive economic cooperation will be hard to achieve.
It goes without saying that the crisis in Afghanistan will create new risks for the region, but Central Asia has long lived with chaos on its borders, and already has twenty years of experience in dealing with the Taliban.
It would be foolish to assume the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will be repeated everywhere else that there is a U.S. presence.
Nothing remotely resembling the “inclusive government” that the Taliban have promised is likely to appear in Afghanistan, while drug trafficking and religious extremism will mushroom.
Russia and India’s divergence toward the two global centers of power—China and the United States—is gradually burning the bridges of Russian-Indian friendship.
The nature of the Afghan problem for Central Asia and Russia lies in Afghanistan becoming a source of instability for the region.
Moscow doesn’t see the current Afghan government as autonomous, and is trying to strike a balance between all the different forces at play there in order to retain its influence if one of those forces collapses.
