MOSCOW, May 14 (Reuters) – Russia is establishing a “full-fledged partnership” with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and is encouraging \u200cother countries in the region to expand cooperation \u200cwith Kabul, a senior Russian security official was quoted on Thursday \u200bas saying.<\/p>\n
Russia last year became the first country to formally recognise the Islamist Taliban government that seized power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal \u200cfrom Afghanistan after \u206020 years of war.<\/p>\n
Interfax news agency quoted Russian official Sergei Shoigu as saying cooperation \u2060with Kabul was important for the security and development of the region.<\/p>\n
Shoigu, who is secretary of Russia’s Security Council, \u200bsaid Moscow \u200bwas building a “pragmatic dialogue” \u200bwith the Taliban that \u200cincluded security, trade, culture and humanitarian support.<\/p>\n
He was speaking at a meeting with his counterparts from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a 10-member grouping that includes China, India, Iran, Pakistan and a number of ex-Soviet states.<\/p>\n
The SCO \u200cshould revive its contact group \u200bwith Afghanistan, Shoigu added.<\/p>\n
The Taliban was \u200boutlawed by Russia \u200bas a terrorist movement in 2003, but \u200cthe ban was lifted in \u200bApril 2025. \u200bRussia sees a need to work with Kabul as it faces a major security threat from Islamist \u200bmilitant groups based \u200cin a string of countries from Afghanistan to \u200bthe Middle East.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Reuters; writing by \u200bMark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOSCOW, May 14 (Reuters) – Russia is establishing a “full-fledged partnership” with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and is encouraging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2596,2597,5,5777,4876,2601],"class_list":{"0":"post-18841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-afghanistan","9":"tag-kabul","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-sergei-shoigu","12":"tag-shanghai-cooperation-organisation","13":"tag-taliban"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}