As part of its efforts to lift the ban on the Islamist movement, Russia has extended an invitation to the Taliban in Afghanistan to attend its largest yearly economic conference, a senior Russian official was cited as saying on Monday.
Although the Taliban is still officially banned in Russia, relations between the two groups have been gradually improving since the Taliban took control in August 2021 after US-led forces left the country after 20 years of conflict.
President Vladimir Putin has received reports from Russia’s justice and foreign ministries regarding the matter of lifting the ban, according to Zamir Kabulov, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asia Department, who spoke with state news agency TASS.
Although Kabulov stated that the Taliban had received an invitation to the June 5–7 St. Petersburg international economic summit, he acknowledged that there were still some unanswered questions.
He stated that historically, Afghan governments were interested in buying oil goods.
The St Petersburg forum has undergone substantial changes in the wake of the Ukraine war, which has caused the greatest crisis in Russia’s ties with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The forum used to host Western CEOs and investment bankers from London and New York.
Businesses from China, India, Africa, and the Middle East have now displaced Western investors who were hoping to take advantage of Russia’s enormous resource wealth.
The Taliban, which translates as “students” from Pashto, first appeared in the region of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in 1994. It was one of the groups engaged in a civil war for dominance of the nation when the Soviet Union withdrew and the government collapsed.
Members of the so-called “mujahideen” warriors who had fought Soviet forces in the 1980s with American assistance were its first source of recruitment.
Russia officially designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization in 2003, despite occasionally maintaining unofficial relations with the outfit.
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