“It is noteworthy that Pakistan has joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) since it is a regional counter-terrorism organisation. The participation of Pakistan in this framework should make a positive difference,” Ivashentsov, who is a member of Russian foreign ministry’s official think tank Russian Council for International Affairs (RIAC), said. Both India and Pakistan were admitted as full-time members of the Beijing-headquartered eight-member bloc at the grouping’s summit in Astana last year.

The former diplomat stated that Moscow couldn’t go back on its growing military cooperation with Pakistan, a development which has raised hackles in New Delhi.

“We cannot embargo our deliveries to Pakistan. Because it is a sovereign state with a sovereign policy,” Ivashentsov said, adding that Moscow had, so far, only supplied helicopters to Pakistan.

Noting that the road to peace in Afghanistan passed through Pakistan, Russian MP and deputy leader of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Security Alexei Kondratiev stated that international cooperation in Afghanistan was being hampered by the US.

“There is an attempt to portray Russia as a force of evil in Afghanistan. There is an information war against Russia in Afghanistan’s media in this process,” Kondratiev said.

“It affects a lot of aspects of political and economic cooperation between Russia and Afghanistan,” he added.