“Russia sincerely cherishes historically strong friendly, truly trusting ties.”īut Putin’s grip on global influence has appeared shaken in recent days. In recent days Putin has also been working to spread the narrative that he and his allies are united in their vision that a unipolar world-in which the United States leads-can no longer be the status quo. Pommersheim urged the nations and soldiers participating in the exercises to focus on “peaceful responses to global challenges, information sharing, and security cooperation” in the coming days.Īnd after the collective exercise concludes, the United States will conduct exercises one-on-one with just Tajikistan in Fakhrabad Training Center, according to U.S. This year includes training on military decision-making processes and other training, according to the National Guard, which in June and July had soldiers work on countering improvised explosive devices in Tajikistan. In previous years the training has consisted of convoy operations, close quarter battle trainings, raid execution, improvised explosive device detection, and mounted movements, according to the Pentagon. Central Command exercises like this happen over 30 times a year and aren’t planned with the interest of being regionally inflammatory but rather to improve the ability of the and our allies and partners to respond to a myriad of contingency events, as well as enhance the participants overall interoperability,” a U.S. The Pentagon doesn’t intend for the exercise to be inflammatory. Ambassador to Tajikistan John Mark Pommersheim said the goal of the exercises is to “strengthen relationships with our partners in the region.” The exercises, in Russia’s proverbial backyard, could appear to run counter to Putin’s goals to shore up his collective defense bloc against NATO-U.S.

The summertime visit was meant to allow Putin and his counterpart, Tajikistan’s president, Emomali Rahmon, to discuss “issues related to military cooperation.”

In a show of how important Tajikistan’s support is to Putin, Putin made Tajikistan his first visit since invading Ukraine. “Russia should not fight alone against the expansion of NATO,” Belarusian leader and longtime Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko said then.

Putin's no 1 enemy