MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: The United States’ actions in Afghanistan in the past 20 years can hardly be called logical, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.
"Today, we hear statements that it is a logical completion of the United States’ operation in Afghanistan. IT is not true. It is not a logical completion, it is a failure. [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov said it after a series of conferences in Dushanbe and Tashkent. IT is a failure. Because only a campaign that has some logic can have a logical completion. But it is impossible to understand the logic of what the United States was doing there," she said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 television channel.
The Russian diplomat noted that over the twenty years of its presence in Afghanistan the United States had never reported about its actions in that country to the United Nations Security Council. "Twenty years is a long period of time. And over this period, the United States has never reported not only to the United Nations Security Council but to the entire international community, despite the reminders, despite the calls, despite its commitments. The United States has never come to the Security Council to tell about the results of what they have done there," she said.
"One of the United States’ initiatives is to accommodate Afghan nationals evacuated from that country in neighboring countries. How many people do you think are meant? Tens of thousands," she explained.
US President Joe Biden said on April 14 he had decided to finish the operation in Afghanistan, the longest foreign military campaign in US history, and pull out American troops by September 11.
The US operation in Afghanistan has been ongoing since October 2001. At its peak in 2010-2013, the number of foreign troops in the country exceeded 150,000 soldiers. The main operational forces of the US and NATO were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014.
