MOSCOW - The U.S. authorities want to dispose their military resources around Afghanistan to have an option to launch strikes at Afghanistan if needed, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday (July 12).
Foreign forces, including the United States, are withdrawing after almost 20 years of fighting, a move that has emboldened the Taliban to try to gain fresh territory in Afghanistan.
That has prompted hundreds of Afghan security personnel and refugees to flee across the border into neighboring Tajikistan and raised fears in Moscow and other capitals that Islamist extremists could infiltrate Central Asia, a region Russia views as its backyard.
The CSTO, the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) dominated by Russia, said on Thursday it was ready to use all its resources if necessary to contain a crisis on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the Interfax news agency reported.