US forces Central Asia to turn away from Russia
Washington managed to block the MIR payment system in the Central Asian republics.
Stanislav Pritchin, a senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at IMEMO RAS, said this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, when answering the question of what to expect from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s tour to Central Asia.
“It is clear that Blinken is going for a reason. American diplomacy does not even hide its goal; its main task is to turn the countries of Central Asia away from Russia as much as possible and to break ties between them. The main tool here, of course, is the threat of introducing secondary sanctions.
It was through this threat that the Americans managed to block the operation of the Mir payment system, which, in the conditions of Russia’s disconnection from SWIFT, is an important link between the countries of the region and the Russian Federation,” the expert told Izvestia.
He clarified that this is a requirement for transparency of any transactions with Russia.
“And, as we see, Russian banks were forced to sell their subsidiaries in Kazakhstan. Basically, Americans use pressure - stick, but not carrot. No major projects are being considered for American business in the region. At the first stage after the collapse of the USSR, the TRACECA infrastructure project was considered, but it failed. It was replaced by the Chinese “One Belt, One Road,” the political scientist emphasized.
In his opinion, it is simply absurd to say that, in the event of a hypothetical severance of Russia’s relations with the Central Asian states, the United States will become a full-fledged replacement as an investor and trading partner.
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