While European countries and the United States are evacuating their embassies from Afghanistan, Russian diplomats are complimenting the Taliban and complaining only that due to the cancellation of civilian flights, some members of the diplomatic mission failed to go on a planned vacation.
Kabul has been under Taliban control for a little over a day, and so far “impressions are good,” said Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov. “The embassy is guaranteed complete security. There was very strong terrorism under Ashraf Ghani. There were three, four or five explosions in the city almost every day,” he said.
In Russia, the Taliban movement is banned and considered terrorist. However, this did not prevent the militants from coming to the Russian Foreign Ministry for talks in July, where the Taliban promised to fight the Islamic State and eradicate drug trafficking.
We are not enemies of the Taliban, otherwise they would have nothing in common with us and would not guarantee the security of the Russian embassy in Kabul. Yes, we have contacts, we did not hide it. Russia has now taken on the role of leader in promoting peaceful dialogue between the now Taliban Afghanistan and other major international partners, “said political scientist Vladimir Sotnikov.
But despite the generally positive rhetoric, Russia is in no hurry to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government. According to Zamir Kabulov, the president’s special envoy for Afghanistan, first all members of the UN Security Council must make sure that the militants are ready to behave “civilly.”
“Today’s top Taliban leaders in Kabul do not need any aggression and no world caliphate. They will deal with the structure of the Afghan, even Islamic, state. They will think about reforms, the lack of protest, the improvement of the social situation of those who supported them. What we are seeing is the victory of the Islamic liberation movement, so there is no external threat, so what can we say? “They will deal with state affairs. They need international contacts as with a smart state. They need money. They will do everything to treat them as a normal state,” said Oleksiy Malashenko, a political scientist and doctor of historical sciences.
The Taliban themselves have publicly stated that they will not interfere in the daily lives of Afghans and do not want the country’s international isolation. However, apart from Russia, only China is ready to cooperate with the new government of Afghanistan.