Former U.S. Diplomats Try To Explain The Kremlin's Motivation To Offer Bounties To Taliban Fighters To Kill U.S. Soldiers In Afghanistan

Defense One: In Russian Bounties, Former Diplomats See Effort To Mess With US — But Not Much More

Moscow’s strategic calculus is much harder to parse.

In the week since it became public that the United States had evidence Russia was offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan, questions have swirled about the Kremlin’s motivation.

The revelation has created a firestorm in Washington, with Democrats — and some Republicans — calling for harsh penalties on Moscow if the intelligence is determined to be credible.

Why would Russia take such an escalatory step, some analysts have asked, when the Taliban were already killing Americans in Afghanistan of their own accord?

For former senior diplomats to the region, the answer is likely simple: Russian President Vladimir Putin saw an opportunity to cause harm to the United States, and he took it.

The best explanation, said Steven Pifer, the ambassador to Ukraine under President Clinton, is that Russia is “trying to do whatever they can to frustrate the Americans.”

There are two diverging theories about Russia’s strategic calculus. Some analysts suggest that Russia’s goal is to hasten the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, something President Donald Trump has talked about doing since taking office in 2017.

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WNU Editor: It does not serve the short/medium/or long tern strategic interest of Russia to see the Taliban come back to power in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union/Russia has a long history of fighting Islamic insurgencies and wars, and the Taliban have proven themselves to be one of the worse. Everyone in Russia knows that if the Taliban grab power in Afghanistan, within a few years they would be supporting insurgencies in the central Asian states, and from there this unrest will migrate to regions of Russia that have large Muslim populations. Why Americans are fixated on the idea that the Kremlin wants to push the US out of Afghanistan ASAP completely baffles me. But that is the narrative that I am hearing and seeing today.

Update: Here is another explanation .... Is Russia Paying the Taliban a Bounty to Kill US Troops? An Alternative Explanation (Joseph V. Micallef, Military.com).