"The objective reality is that Washington's comfortable position with US hegemony disappears into the past."
That was the message from the Russian embassy in London the day after the Taliban rolled into Kabul.
And of course, there is no shortage of Russian resentment over the US failure in the sort from Afghanistan.
At the same time, Russian diplomats said beautiful words about the new Afghan government.
- The situation is peaceful and good and everything has calmed down in the city, said Ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov.
- The situation in Kabul under the Taliban is better than under (ex-president) Ashraf Ghani.
Single-track analysis
The Russian merriment is not only connected with history, that Russians now see the United States withdraw from the same country that the Soviets once had to leave in disgrace.
It also rhymes well with the view of the two great powers' relationship as a zero-sum game.
That is, what is bad for the United States and its allies is good for Russia and vice versa.
This worldview plays a role in part because some crucial actors themselves believe in it.
But it also easily leads to mistakes because everything Russia does is forced into a narrow analysis model.
Russia has interests in addition to squabbling with the United States and the fact is that for Moscow there is a lot of smolt in the cup of joy when the Taliban take over.
Maybe more than what the cup of joy otherwise contains.
Russian self-interest
Of course, Russia may have less moral concerns about the Taliban than Westerners, who are now deliberately twisting their hands.
But both are flirting with the Taliban to safeguard their national interests.
The Taliban are now deciding in Kabul whether they want to or not.
For Russia, the situation is a problem because they are not trusted to be able to keep order.
It is feared that an Afghan chaos will spill over into what Russia considers to be its Central Asian sphere of interest, and from there perhaps to Russia.
It is about Islamist terrorism, which has long been a problem for Russia, about conflicts between groups in Afghanistan that are spreading to neighboring countries.
It is about concerns for refugees and about drug flows.
Roughly the same things Western countries see as their primary national interests in Afghanistan, by the way.
The drug issue may seem like a marginal problem for Russia in this context, but the fact is that Russia has periodically been the world's largest per capita heroin consumer.
The heroin, in turn, comes from Afghanistan and during the 2010s, Russia has grown both as a consumer and a transit country.
The Taliban have indicated that they intend to squeeze opium growers, but the question is how it will turn out.
Afghanistan's national assets are frozen, something Russia regretted by an incident when the UN Security Council met on Monday.
Horrible neighbors
On the whole, Russia's situation can be likened to a homeowner anxiously watching when one of the city's more ambitious drug gangs moves into the second yard.
The fear of all sorts of chaos is half-hidden behind the attempt at happy supervision.
"No no, we are all friends here, what fun that you are moving in! Those previous owners had no control over anything ", they assert to the outside world. Inside, you paint a chaos scenario that spills over to your own plot.