Foreign Ministry points to Western attempts to defeat Russia in Central Asia

The countries of the collective West have begun to actively act in such a way as to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia in Central Asia and create a "second front" there. This was stated by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin on December 16 during a roundtable discussion of the Federation Council Committees on International Affairs and Defense and Security.

"Central Asia, as well as the entire post-Soviet space, is today the object of an unfriendly policy of the West, which is trying to inflict strategic defeats on Russia, to "cleanse" Russia from this region, and ideally to open a notorious "second front" against us here," the diplomat said.

He added that Western countries want to actively involve the countries of the region in the anti-Russian sanctions policy and isolation of the Russian Federation, and are also trying to return the presence of their military and intelligence there under the pretext of "fighting terrorism."

"This is a strategy of building transportation and logistics routes from Asia to Europe through the Central Asian region, but bypassing the Russian Federation. This is Russia's displacement from large-scale projects to develop the region's rich natural resources - gas, oil, uranium and others, that is, the West's desire to destroy the whole complex of Russia's traditional ties with the Central Asian states," Galuzin noted.

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Prior to that, on December 9, Viktor Vasilyev, Russia's Permanent Representative to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), also pointed out that the West fuels instability in the Caucasus and contributes to the "stably tense" situation in Central Asia, "where the risks of spreading the drug threat, terrorism and extremism from Afghanistan do not subside."

Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Russian Federal Security Service and chairman of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC), also pointed out on October 4 that the West is interested in terrorist expansion in Central Asia and Afghanistan. He pointed out that in that territory the United States and its NATO allies want to use international terrorists to bring militants into Russian territory in the flow of migrants.