Kabul still interested in Russian weapons - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW, March 29. /TASS/. Afghan authorities have assured Moscow that they are still interested in using Russian weapons and military equipment, Russia’s Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, who is also the Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department, said on Thursday. "When we raised this question before Afghanistan’s authorities, they admitted, though reluctantly, that it [statements about their refusal to use Russian-made weapons - TASS] was the United States’ position, while they were actually still interested in using Russian weapons and military equipment," the Russian diplomat said. He said that the situation when the US military made statements on behalf of Kabul was strange. "Only the country’s legitimate government is eligible to say such things," Kabulov noted. Giving up on Russian helicopters Afghanistan’s Acting Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami said earlier that the country did not need Russian-made helicopters any more since it had started to receive rotorcraft from NATO member states. At the same time, he stressed that while switching to helicopters from NATO members, Afghanistan would need assistance in maintaining the operational Russian rotorcraft. The so-called helicopter package, which stipulated NATO’s purchases of Russian helicopters for Afghanistan through a special trust fund, was one of the main areas of cooperation between Russia and NATO until the alliance froze the project in 2014. Read more