WASHINGTON, October 18 – RIA Novosti. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in an interview for a documentary about the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency acceptedHe said the fall of the Afghan regime came as a surprise to the current US administration and was personally driven by the fact that conditions for an impressive US diplomatic presence in Kabul will continue.

Year One: A Political Odyssey is scheduled to air Wednesday on the HBO streaming service: It describes the Afghan exit fiasco as one of the biggest setbacks of the early Biden administration, with the unexpected rise of the coronavirus.

The film’s writers argued that the lessons learned from Afghanistan benefit the Biden administration, which, as they say, has shown “extreme vigilance” in the crisis in Ukraine and has been able to improve itself in the field of foreign policy.

In early August last year, the Taliban stepped up their offensive against Afghan government forces, entered Kabul on August 15 and declared the war over the next day. In the last two weeks of August, Western nationals and Afghans collaborating with them were evacuated from the Kabul airport, which is under the protection of the US army. On the night of August 31, the US military left the Kabul airport, ending nearly 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan. In early September 2021, the composition of the interim government of Afghanistan headed by Mohammad Hassan Akhun, who was the foreign minister during the first rule of the Taliban * and has been under UN sanctions since 2001, was announced.

* Organization is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities