Why is Afghanistan so important to Russia?

Published: July 2, 2020, 11:43 a.m.

b'With the recent reporting that Russia funded the Taliban in an effort to kill American soldiers, Brad discusses why Afghanistan has historically been so important to Russia, and how it has fed into their current obsession with keeping the Taliban in power. Russia has a long history of supplying weapons and equipment to the Taliban and they have their own motivations to push the U.S. out of Afghanistan. He says the plot is another example of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, making efforts to eliminate dissenters. Examples of this dot recent history: the assassination in 2006 of a former Russian Intelligence officer, the 2018 attempted assassination of Sergey Skripal and his daughter, and the much-publicized digital interference in the 2016 American election. With Joe is ABC News Crime & Terrorism Analyst Brad Garrett.'