Putin speaks to international journalists in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Saint Petersburg:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called on Moscow to “build” relations with the Taliban government as a delegation visited Russia.
“We always believed that we needed to deal with reality. The Taliban are in power in Afghanistan… We have to build relations with the Taliban government,” Putin said at a meeting with foreign media.
Putin was speaking on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where a Taliban delegation arrived on Wednesday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that Moscow planned to remove the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations nearly three years after the group seized power from a U.S.-backed government.
“They are the real power” in Afghanistan, Lavrov said at the time, speaking during Putin’s visit to Uzbekistan, in Central Asia.
The Taliban have been designated a terrorist organization in Russia since 2003.
The measure could further boost diplomacy between Russia and Afghanistan, but would fall short of official recognition of the Taliban government and what it calls the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.
Since taking power, Taliban authorities have enforced an extreme form of Islamic law that effectively bans women from public life.
Russia has been promoting ties with the Taliban for years.
The head of US forces in Afghanistan claimed in 2018 that Moscow was supplying weapons to the group – accusations that Moscow denied at the time.
Moscow itself has a complicated history with Afghanistan, with the Soviet Union fighting a decade-long war against mujahideen guerrilla fighters in the 1980s to prop up a Kremlin-backed government.
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