Russia faces great risks despite claiming the victory of propaganda

LONDON – The crisis in Afghanistan poses substantial risks to Russia and Central Asia, geopolitical experts have warned, even as the Kremlin tries to claim a propaganda victory over the US.

Initially, Russia’s response to the Taliban insurgency seemed to celebrate the defeat of the Afghan government with formation and support for the United States, as well as the departure of the United States. Russia’s ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, praised the Taliban’s conduct and said the group helped make the Afghan capital safer in the first 24 hours after leaving the United States. This is despite Russia officially recognizing the Taliban as a terrorist organization.

“The Russians feel as if they have achieved a great victory,” Kate Mallinson, an associate member of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, said during a webinar for the Chatham House think tank.

“They feel they will reaffirm their influence in Central Asia,” he said, noting that Russia is likely to try to further consolidate its position as the region’s main security guarantor.

Moscow has a major economic and military influence over the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, all of which border directly on Afghanistan.

“But I would say this kind of propaganda victory is more pyrrhic than triumphant,” Mallinson added.

Russia on Wednesday launched its own evacuation plans, sending four military planes to evacuate 500 Russian citizens and those of its regional allies. The directive, which came under President Vladimir Putin, marked an abrupt shift in the Kremlin’s stance on the Taliban.

It came amid a massive withdrawal effort at Kabul airport, with countries struggling to get people out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan before the August 31 deadline set by President Joe Biden.

Tens of thousands of people had gathered chaotically at Hamid Karzai International Airport in the days since the Taliban took the capital, desperately seeking to secure a safe passage out of the country.

Kremlin envoys have insisted the U.S. should not shift responsibility for the collapse of Afghanistan to others, and state media channels have tried to portray the departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan as a significant coup. .

More recently, however, the tone seems to have changed. “The situation is developing, time is running out, the situation remains extremely tense and we are still following it more closely and maintaining our concerns,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

Putin has previously said he hopes the Taliban will guarantee that they will restore order, and said it is important not to allow terrorists to enter neighboring countries.

“It will be much harder than the Russians do. Even if the Taliban keep their promises to the Russians, they will have to face a much more asymmetrical war and it will be much more unpredictable than the Russians will be able to do.” to deal with it, I think, ”Mallinson told CNBC.

This is because the crisis comes at a time when many Central Asian countries are in their “lowest decline,” Mallinson said, citing unauthorized populations across the region, the coronavirus pandemic in course and this year’s extremely severe drought.

Moscow has strengthened its military base in Tajikistan, a country that shares an 843-mile border with Afghanistan, where it is celebrating a month of military exercises.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Kremlin had said it had learned lessons from the failed Soviet Union intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s and would not deploy armed forces there.

Olga Oliker, director of Europe and Central Asia for the International Crisis Group, told CNBC that Russia “recognizes a lot” of possible security problems as a result of the crisis in Afghanistan, for Central Asia and also for it. same.

“They may simultaneously be a little pleased that the United States has an egg in its face and is nervous about its implications. They fear destabilizing refugee flows, they fear a safe haven for groups that could attack them from Afghanistan, and they fear , as Putin recently said, that militants could hide among refugees, “he said.

“If stability remains under the Taliban and the Taliban keep their promise not to let Afghanistan be a base for attacks on Russia and Central Asia and ideally stop the flow of opium, then Russia will be able to live, ”Oliker added. “But things could go wrong: Russia will try to strengthen Central Asia as needed.”

Putin has criticized the idea that some Western countries want to move refugees from Afghanistan to Central Asia while their visas are processed in the US and the European Union.

“It means that they can be sent without visas to these countries, to our neighbors, while they themselves [the West] “Don’t you want to take them without visas?” Putin said, Russian news agencies reported last week. “Why is there such a humiliating approach to solving the problem?”

Among Afghanistan’s neighbors, Tajikistan has pledged to host up to 100,000 refugees. It works with the UN and other agencies to establish camps and other facilities as the humanitarian crisis unfolds.

“I think it will be a particular concern [to Russia] that the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic regions of Afghanistan, usually a buffer against the Taliban, have also come under Taliban control, ”Tim Ash, Bluebay Asset Management’s chief emerging market strategist, told CNBC by email.

Ash said he hoped Russia, which described how it had previously used a “hard fist” approach to Islamic extremism, would strengthen its already large military presence in Tajikistan and perhaps even extend it to Uzbekistan.

“While the Central Asian states will be nervous for Moscow to use the threat of the Islamist insurgency to push its idea of ​​the Eurasian Union and the centralizing agenda that Putin is pursuing throughout the CIS space – look at Belarus, ”said Ash, who noted that this is ahead of the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR in December this year.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) refers to a regional intergovernmental organization of nine former Soviet republics in Eurasia.

Russia is expected to increase pressure on Central Asian countries to join the Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-led initiative that currently includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.