MOSCOW, February 8. /TASS/. The United States will have eventually to pull its troops from Afghanistan and Russia will be ready to help the Americans in this issue, Russian Presidential Special Representative for Afghanistan, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asia Department Zamir Kabulov said in an interview with TASS.
"They will have to leave, sooner or later. And they need to withdraw without a loss of face. We in Russia are ready to offer help - to the extent we are capable of doing so - so that this agreement could be achieved," the diplomat said.
"However, as they say, [the US] will have to pay for the broken dishes in Afghanistan by reconstructing the country earnestly now, but not like in the previous 17 years," he continued.
"Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured in, but the effect is invisible," he added. "The donors should behave in another way, while Afghanistan’s future government should show responsibility about foreign aid."
"Then things will move on and we will reconstruct Afghanistan, if not as a prosperous state but as a normal one," he stressed.
When asked if Moscow trusts US President Donald Trump’s intentions to pull the US force out of Afghanistan, Kabulov answered, "I’d prefer to trust, since the US president says it."
"When he substantiates this with comprehensible - at least to me - logic, it is a step in the right direction," Kabulov said. "Actually, he says right things: 17 years, one trillion [US] dollars and the lives of 2,300 Americans. What for? For the war to go on and for them to spill blood."
Earlier, President Trump said that the United States plans to pull its troops from Afghanistan if the Afghan government seals a peace deal with Taliban (banned in Russia - TASS).