It's time to forget about the Skripals: London is not averse to cooperating with Moscow on Afghanistan

Gennady Charodeyev

By ordering his "limited contingent" in Afghanistan to leave the country, Biden, as the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, framed Great Britain and accelerated the seizure of power in the country by terrorists, the colonel said. Nevertheless, Camp is confident that China and Russia have actually recognized the power of the (banned in the Russian Federation) Taliban in Afghanistan and, having united with Iran and Pakistan, will soon begin to “enrich themselves and plunder” the war-torn country even more.

Meanwhile, as reported by The Times, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also disappointed with Joe Biden. He is closely watching what Vladimir Putin is doing in the region. In the next few hours London will turn to Russia for support. We'll probably have to forget for a while about the poisoning of the Skripals, spy scandals and the expulsion of diplomats.

Earlier, the head of the foreign office Dominic Raab said about the possibility of cooperation in Afghanistan with such an "inconvenient" partner as Russia. The diplomat believes that an urgent need to create an international contact group, which will allow "stronger influence" on the Taliban and better convey to the Taliban "common ideas."

"If we want to exert the maximum deterrent effect on the Taliban, then we will have to work, including in one link with India, Pakistan, China and other countries that are concerned about terrorism and refugees", - Raab said. According to him, London has already initiated a meeting of the UN Security Council "with the prospect of forming a contact group on Afghanistan."

At an emergency G7 summit, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Johnson intends to appeal to the US President with a demand to extend the deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which should take place until August 31. However, Biden at the next briefing said: there is no need to postpone.

But official London is forced to extend an indefinite period for the evacuation of its subjects from Kabul and Afghan citizens endangered by the Taliban. The fact is that the British, unlike the Americans, turned out to be real gentlemen: now the evacuation program includes not only the Afghans who collaborated with the British troops, but also Afghan politicians, other representatives of civil society and members of their families. Currently, the plans of the Royal Air Force of Great Britain are to evacuate up to 6 thousand people from Kabul.

“It is known that practically the entire British elite in a harsh manner expressed disappointment over the US panicky flight from Afghanistan”, - Andrey Kazantsev, chief researcher at MGIMO, told Novye Izvestia. - They would like Washington to really return to its former role - a global distributor of liberal democratic values, including in Afghanistan. The hopes of British politicians on Biden were connected with this. Therefore, the decision of the current head of the White House to withdraw from Afghanistan (the way it was implemented) drew very serious criticism in the British Isles. In London, many believe that the United Kingdom's military should have assumed the role of the main military force in Afghanistan. But today the British are not talking about military policy in the region. Alone, they also will not climb there. We can only talk about solving humanitarian problems, for example, about forming a contact group on Afghanistan. In this situation, London can only turn to Afghanistan's large neighbors - Russia and China .. This does not mean that the British intend to break with the United States and open a new page in relations with Moscow and Beijing. But they perfectly understand that now they cannot do anything in Afghanistan without Russia and China, the expert emphasized.