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Russia is taking away an important player in Asia from the US
Deepening trade and economic ties between Russia and Pakistan will strengthen Russia's position in the struggle with the United States for influence in the Asian country. In particular, the meaning of the meeting was explained to URA.RU by Evgenia Voiko, associate professor of the political science department at the Russian Financial University, who believes that Moscow supports Islamabad's desire to join BRICS. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif visited Islamabad on October 16 to participate in the summit of heads of government of the SCO member states.
"Russian-Pakistani relations are built on the principles of friendship, mutual respect and mutual benefit. We strive to take our cooperation to a higher level and fill it with specific projects and new content. Through our government, we prioritize the development of trade and economic cooperation with Pakistan. From January to August, our bilateral trade turnover increased by almost 13%, exceeding 57 billion rubles, or 633 million dollars," Mishustin said.
But this is not much, the Russian Prime Minister believes. But the potential of the economies of both countries is enormous. According to Mishustin, Russia sees "a joint task of creating favorable conditions for the growth of trade, mutual investments and the launch of new promising projects, including energy, industry, agriculture, infrastructure construction, logistics and transport."
"We have increased supplies of Russian energy resources to Pakistan. Russian companies are ready to participate in the development of land and sea routes due to Pakistan's advantageous geographical location. Your country has great public transport potential. This will expand the geography of freight traffic along the North-South international transport corridor and provide access to the growing global market of the Southern Hemisphere," Mishustin said.
It should be noted that the Prime Minister began the talks in Russian. But Sharif had a problem with simultaneous translation. The Russian Prime Minister was not embarrassed and repeated his words in English. We will continue working in Russian after the translation problems are resolved.
Let us recall that Pakistan has declared its intention to join BRICS, and Russia has also supported this decision. Thus, the countries will be able to develop trade and economic relations not only within the SCO, but also within the future BRICS. According to political scientist Evgenia Voiko, this is symbolic. "Here, the element of close relations between Pakistan and the United States is taken into account.
Potential difficulties are related to Pakistan’s complicated relations with India and China. But the political scientist notes that this “does not worry Islamabad.” For Russia, a broader partnership within BRICS opens up more opportunities for developing and implementing important infrastructure projects. “As trust in Western institutions declines, consolidation into large-scale partnerships is already a kind of need of the hour. Infrastructure cannot be built overnight, but it is obvious that reconciliation in the political, economic and humanitarian spheres is important,” the political scientist concluded.
The bilateral meeting of the prime ministers of Russia and Pakistan was held separately from the summit of the heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states. In July of this year, the SCO summit was held in Astana, during which it was decided to develop a new strategy for the development of the SCO until 2035.