Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova sharply condemned the fake news that started circulating about her country alleging that it’s clandestinely arming anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan’s Panjshir region. She added that sending arms to that conflict zone would contradict Russian interests by worsening the situation in that war–torn country. This is consistent with Moscow’s concerns about Afghanistan’s impending humanitarian crisis and its possible regional reverberations.
Despite still officially designating the Taliban as a terrorist organization, Russia pragmatically engages with it in the interests of peace, stability, and development. The last thing that Moscow wants to see there is another armed anti-Taliban conflict, especially one speculatively sponsored by its allies in neighboring Tajikistan, that could further destabilize the country and thus create space for comparatively much worse terrorist groups like ISIS-K to rise.
The speculative scenario that was referenced above is considerably concerning since there have been unverified reports that Tajikistan might at the very least be passively facilitating the anti-Taliban efforts of those members of the “National Resistance Front” (NRF) that it hosts. Whatever the truth may be, there shouldn’t be any debate that such an eventuality would be contrary to Russia’s strategic interests in Afghanistan.
It might be upon those rumors that the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is now speculating that Russia is secretly participating in that unverified arms smuggling operation. Casual observations might extend credence to this theory simply on the basis that Tajikistan is Russia’s CSTO mutual defense ally so they assume that Dushanbe can’t do anything without Moscow’s approval. That’s a false assessment if there ever was on since Russia doesn’t hegemonically dominate its allies like the US does.
Nevertheless, there’s a faction of the supposedly Russian-friendly Alt-Media Community (AMC) that’s fallen for that wishful thinking fantasy. This is evidenced by influential gatekeepers such as The Saker recently speculating that Russia was fully aware of the Hybrid War of Terror on Kazakhstan prior to it going kinetic but sadistically let it worsen to the point of public head-choppings in order to exploit that chaos as the pretext for militarily intervening and subsequently dominating its ally’s foreign policy.
That’s a completely incorrect analysis of the situation that was comprehensively debunked by the author here. Be that as it is, some still cling to the fantasy that Russia hegemonically dominates its allies, which might explain why forces within that Alt-Media faction earlier speculated that Moscow was indeed arming anti-Taliban fighters and still continues to do so. In their mind, Russia “must” hate the Taliban since they emerged from the 1980s Mujahideen that defeated the USSR.
According to their “logic”, Russia’s enemies always remain the same so it follows that the Kremlin will do whatever it can to topple the Taliban. This false “logic” is also displayed when it comes to Russian-“Israeli” relations. These “5D chess” theorists dismiss all objectively existing and easily verifiable facts to the contrary to speculate that Russia and especially President Putin “secretly hates” “Israel” because Moscow and Tel Aviv were fierce rivals during most of the Old Cold War.
It’s this warped perspective, one that’s been weaponized by self-interested AMC gatekeepers over the years, that’s presumably at play when it comes to those supposedly Russian-friendly forces who counterproductively give credence to the US-led Western MSM’s latest fake news campaign. The takeaway is that Russian officials’ statements should always be taken at face value because they sincerely and accurately reflect their country’s policies, even if certain observers disagree with them.