World News | Russia Reaffirms Opposition to US Presence in Central Asia

Moscow, Oct 12 (AP) Russia on Tuesday reaffirmed its strong opposition to any US military presence in Central Asia to a visiting senior US diplomat.

Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland arrived in Moscow on Monday on a three-day visit for talks that the US State Department said would touch on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues.

Also Read | Kompasu Tropical Storm: 9 Dead, 11 Missing After Flash Floods and Landslides in Philippines.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said after Tuesday's meeting with Nuland that they touched on arms control negotiations and the situation in Afghanistan among other subjects.

Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency that he stressed that “the US and its allies bear the main responsibility among foreign actors for normalising life in Afghanistan, since their presence actually led to the current situation.”

Also Read | Middle Class Increased After COVID-19, Distribution of Labour Income Improved but Self-Employed People Damaged: KERI Report.

The Russian diplomat described the conversation as “direct and businesslike,” adding that he again emphasized Moscow's strong opposition to any US presence in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following the American exit from Afghanistan.

"We strongly reaffirmed the unacceptability to Russia of any form of US military presence in Central Asian countries,” he said, according to Interfax.

There was no immediate comment from the US Embassy.

The US and its allies hoped to negotiate basing agreements, overflight rights and increased intelligence-sharing with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that border Afghanistan or other ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia.

But Russia, which has maintained close political, economic, security and military ties with the Central Asian countries, has bristled at any such US presence.

The US leased a base in Uzbekistan in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan until the country terminated it in 2005 amid tensions with Washington. It also used a base in Kyrgyzstan but it asked the US to leave in 2014 under pressure from Russia.

During her visit to Moscow, Nuland is also set to hold talks with Kremlin deputy chief of staff Dmitry Kozak, who acts as President Vladimir Putin's point person on Ukraine.

The US has strongly backed Ukraine in its standoff with Russia that followed its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and support for a separatist rebellion in the country's eastern industrial heartland.(AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)