MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. Western financial donors have prohibited the Afghan government from spending the funds they provide to purchase weapons of Russian manufacture, Russian presidential envoy for Afghanistan, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Asia Department, Zamir Kabulov, has told TASS in an interview.
"The Afghans are interested in cooperation with Russia in the military-technical sphere. Russia is prepared to provide such assistance, but in practice this runs against a number of obstacles," he said. "One of the main ones is the actual ban by Afghanistan’s foreign financial donors, the US in the first place, on spending the funds provided to Kabul to purchase the necessary weapons and other military gear from Russia."
"Afghanistan’s own budget has no reserved funds of its own for purchasing military gear," Kabulov said. "I would like to recall that before the introduction of such bans by Washington Russia in 2012-2014 provided 63 military transport helicopters Mi-17V-5 for the Afghan security forces under a contract with the Pentagon.
In a situation like this Afghanistan may get military-technical assistance from Russia only if it agrees to provide it on the disinterested basis, Kabulov said.