The Pakistani newspaper Dawn, in an analysis, has written that conflicting Russian and Pakistani interests over Afghanistan, along with Moscow’s longstanding ties with India, are preventing the formation of broad cooperation between Russia and Islamabad. Mohammad Amir Rana, a security analyst and head of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, says Russia’s caution stems more from the two countries’ differing regional views than from their tense past.<\/p>\n
According to the analysis, the sharp differences in the two countries’ economic and defence relations also limit Pakistan’s standing with Russia. The volume of bilateral trade between Pakistan and Russia is estimated at less than $500 million, while trade between Russia and India stands at about $69 billion. Rana also wrote that Moscow’s defence cooperation with Islamabad is selective and falls well short of the level of military cooperation Russia has with India, including joint research and production and after-sales services.<\/p>\n
Dawn wrote that despite India’s diversification of its defence partners, there is no clear sign of a fundamental deterioration in Moscow-New Delhi relations. According to Rana, Russia’s interest in Pakistan is more geopolitical in nature, and maintaining ties with Islamabad keeps Moscow’s channels open with Pakistani political and security leaders, including figures close to Donald Trump, the president of the United States.<\/p>\n
The analysis also says differences over Afghanistan are among the factors limiting cooperation: Russia has recognised the Taliban administration, but Pakistan sees Afghanistan as a source of terrorist threats inside the country. Rana says Russia wants Afghanistan linked with its Central Asian allies, while Pakistan shares interests with the United States on parts of this issue; a situation that, he says, also does not align with China’s desire to keep the US away from the region. The analysis concludes that the shared interests of Russia and Pakistan are limited when it comes to building a broad strategic partnership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistan’s Dawn says Russia’s ties with India and differences over Afghanistan are limiting Moscow’s cooperation with Islamabad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}