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The Soviet leaders believed that the relations should rest on a political basis needed to clarify
the extent of military and political closeness and the scope and size of mutual aid. London, on
its side, was convinced that economic and military cooperation with the Soviet Union should
have no limits except the limits of the possible.
The British ambassador resumed his "bridge building" efforts: on October 13, he visited the So-
viet Embassy to explain that the disharmony in the Soviet and British demarches was due to a
technicality: he had been instructed to inform the Afghan premier about the British demarche
immediately and report about the results to London. Talking to Soviet Ambassador Mikhaylov,
his British colleague did not spare words to point out that the Soviet statement of October 11
was identical to the British one even if better substantiated.
The changes in the development of the relations between the Soviet Union and Great Britain
that became obvious after the December 1941 visit of the UK Foreign Minister to Moscow
strongly affected the British mission in Kabul. The pause in its relations with the Soviet diplo-
matic mission ended and the British demonstrated much more activity. Soviet Ambassador
Mikhaylov informed the Center that the British mission invited him to organize regular exchange
of information about subversive anti-Soviet and anti-British activities of the special services of
the Axis powers. The "Afghan channel" of information exchange between Moscow and London
again started working vigorously as in the first days of the Great Patriotic War and preserved its
importance until the complete rout of fascist Germany in spring 1945. Pavel Sudoplatov, one
of the heads of the Soviet security structures in 1941-1945, later wrote that cooperation between
the special services of the Allies during the Great Patriotic War had been most successful in
Afghanistan.