RRussia plans to recognize the Taliban. Several ministries are “working on the issue” of lifting the designation of the Islamists ruling Afghanistan as a “terrorist organization,” several Russian state news agencies reported on Monday evening. “As for the removal of the terrorist organization status for the Taliban movement, this issue is being processed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Justice Ministry and other relevant Russian authorities,” they quoted an unnamed source in the Foreign Ministry as saying.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in Moscow that Afghanistan is a country that is close to Russia. The Taliban are in fact in control there. The Russian government communicates with the Islamists “like practically everyone else” does. For Russia there are pressing problems to be solved with the Taliban. He left it open what exactly it was about.
Previously, the Russian President's special representative for Afghanistan, Samir Kabulov, told the state agency TASS that the Taliban had been invited to the “Russia – Islamic World Forum”, which will take place in Kazan in mid-May.
Russia added the Taliban to the list of terrorist organizations banned in Russia in 2003. In July 2021, representatives of the Taliban traveled to Moscow for talks, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov then described them as “reasonable people”. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan again a month later, Kabulov said they would now help in the fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS). After the terrorist attack in the concert hall near Moscow in March, for which IS claimed responsibility, the Taliban condemned the act. The Foreign Ministry in Kabul spoke of a “flagrant violation of all human standards.”