[Regnum] Russia is finalizing the issue of excluding the Taliban movement (the organization is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities) from the terrorist list, FSB head Alexander Bortnikov said on October 4.
“We see the Taliban’s readiness to fight the most dangerous wing of ISIS (a terrorist organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation), Vilayat Khorasan (a terrorist organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation), which continues to receive resource support from the West, which uses the terrorist group’s capabilities in subversive actions under a false flag on our territory,” Bortnikov said at a meeting of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of the CIS Member States.
In this regard, the head of the FSB called on his CIS colleagues to cooperate in order to identify communication channels in terrorist structures supervised by the West. The Russian side considers it expedient, on the one hand, to establish contacts with the Taliban, and on the other, to identify potential supporters of terrorists in the CIS countries, Bortnikov said.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on April 1 that the issue of removing the Taliban’s status as a terrorist organization is being worked on, and the final decision will be made by the country’s top leadership.
In December 2023, the Kazakh government decided to remove the Taliban from its list of terrorists. Kyrgyzstan also removed the Taliban from its list of banned organizations on September 6.
Since March 2022, Moscow has established diplomatic relations with Afghanistan and accredited diplomats of the Taliban-formed government. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in January of this year that representatives of the Taliban movement control power in Afghanistan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 28 that the status of the Taliban movement is constantly being discussed. The head of state added that Russia takes into account the opinion of each country in the region on the issue of recognizing the Taliban.
More from regnum.ru
Kabulov: Taliban decided to be excluded from list of terrorist
organizations banned in Russia
The decision to exclude the Taliban movement from the list of terrorist organizations was made at the highest level, but legal procedures must be followed. This was stated on October 4 by Zamir Kabulov, a member of the Board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of the Russian Federation and former Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan.
"The Foreign Ministry, together with the FSB (Federal Security Service) and a number of other Russian agencies, is completing legal work on the process of excluding the Taliban movement from the Russian Federation's terrorist list. It is not a matter of desire; the decision in principle on this issue has been made by the top leadership of Russia. But all processes must be carried out within the framework of the Russian legal field," Kabulov said during a meeting of the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan.
| Courtesy of Fred, GeoTV adds: |
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
said in July that Russia considered Afghanistan's Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...movement an ally in the fight against terrorism.
Russia has been slowly building ties with the Taliban since it seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as US-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war but the movement is still officially outlawed in Russia.
No country has formally recognised the Taliban-led government as the country's legitimate leadership, although China and the UAE have accepted its ambassadors.
Russia added the Afghan Taliban to its list of terrorist organizations in 2003. Removing it would be an important step by Moscow towards normalising relations with Afghanistan.
The Taliban's acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said in a speech in Moscow that recent decisions by Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to remove the former gunnies from a list of banned groups was a welcome step.