Russia and Pakistan appear to be reassessing their relations as suggested by a recent sequence of events. The process was set into motion by a fake news report from Afghan International on 1 October alleging that India is financing the Taliban’s purchase of Belarusian drones with Russia’s approval citing five senior sources, including former security officials, who might have coordinated this story with Pakistan due to their shared opposition to the Taliban. This hypothesis is all the more plausible in light of what followed.
Russia and Pakistan then shared polar opposite views on Taliban-led Afghanistan at the eighth Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan on 5 October whereby Russia praised the Taliban for fighting against ISIS-K while Pakistan accused the Taliban of backing ISIS-K. Russia clearly lent no credence to Pakistan’s accusation seeing as how Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with Secretary of the Security Council Sergey Shoigu the day after on 6 October.
Less than a week later on 12 October, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev arrived in Pakistan for a lengthy four-day visit, the first one by any Russian Interior Minister. The Pakistani Embassy in Russia reported that it’ll place “particular emphasis on strengthening cooperation in internal security, law enforcement & counter-terrorism.” It therefore appears that Russia lent credence to the Taliban’s accusation that Pakistan backs ISIS-K and decided to dispatch Kolokoltsev to investigate.
On the same day, 12 October, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Venediktov shared some insight into his country’s ties with Afghanistan, which simply reaffirmed the positions that were previously articulated. He importantly praised the Taliban for its anti-terrorist success and declared that “Afghanistan’s role in regional affairs should not be underestimated” because “a prosperous, peaceful, and independent Afghanistan is in the interests of all countries in the region.”
From Afghan International’s report on 1 October till the present, an increasingly vicious infowar is being waged against Russia on social media by anonymous Pakistani accounts (“trolls”) on the false premise that Russia arms the Taliban against Pakistan. Some of the larger accounts are suspected of being linked to Pakistan’s Establishment, which refers to its powerful military and intelligence agencies that are considered to be the collective force that really runs Pakistan, not its civilian government.
It’s therefore reasonable to wonder whether Pakistan planted that fake news report which has since sparked its trolls’ increasingly vicious infowar on Russia that could serve as the pretext for a chill in their ties brought about by their polar opposite views on Taliban-led Afghanistan. Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier implied that Pakistan has ties with ISIS-K as documented here, but Russia hasn’t let that impede the attempted strengthening of bilateral ties, and it won’t be the first to worsen them.
The CSTO-CIS-SCO Conference on Security in Central Asia and Afghanistan in Moscow from 15-16 October will present the next opportunity for Russia and Pakistan to share their polar opposite views on Taliban-led Afghanistan. It’s even possible that they’ve hardened since the eighth Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan given the sequence of events that followed as enumerated above, which suggests that they’re reassessing their relations, but hopefully Pakistan won’t decide to worsen them.
