“Russia's paper” following chaos in Afghanistan, BBC: Planing a new era with Taliban rule

Russian diplomats described young men in the city as a normal <x0m>deness” and argued that the capital was safer now than before. President Vladimir Putin said Friday that taking control of the Taliban was a reality they had to work with.

Everything is too far from the catastrophic nine-year war in Afghanistan that many Russians remember from the support of Kabul's communist government in the 1980s.

Warm Words for the Taliban

Unlike most foreign embassies in the capital, Russia says its diplomatic mission remains open and has had warm words for new rulers. Ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov met with a representative of the Taliban within 48 hours of taking control and said he had not seen evidence of revenge or violence.

Moscow's UN representative Vassially Nebenzia spoke of a bright future of national reconciliation, with the return of order and law to the streets, and for “the outcome of many years of bloodshed”.

Russia's special envoy to Afghanistan (R) image title has talked with Taliban leaders for several years

President Putin's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Cabulov, even said the Taliban were easier to negotiate than with the old puppet government of exiled President Ashraf Ghan.

Moscow has little time for Mr. Ghani: her diplomats claimed this week that he had fled in four cars and a helicopter full of money -- the charges he dismissed as lies.

Developing Improved Russian Ties

Russia is not racing to recognise the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan, but there has been an apparent softening of rhetoric. The state news agency Tass this week replaced the term “terrorism” with “radical” in its reports on Taliban.

Moscow has long been making contact with the Taliban. Even though Taliban have been on the list of Russian terrorist and banned organisations since 2003, representatives of the group have come to Moscow for talks since 2018.

New Afghanistan Government

The former Afghan government backed by the West accused Russia's presidential envoy of being an open supporter of the Taliban and of exempting the official government from three-year talks in Moscow.

Kabul denied it and said they were ungrateful. But since 2015 he said Russia's interests coincided with the Taliban when it came to fighting the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS).

This did not go unnoticed in Washington. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia in August 2017 of supplying the Taliban arms, a remark Moscow rejected and described as “confusing”.

The foreign ministry in Moscow said that “had asked our American colleagues to provide evidence, but without profit... we offer no support to the Taliban”.

In February of this year, Mr. Cabulov angered the Afghan government by praising the Taliban for fulfilling their side of the Doha agreements “in an irreverent manner” while accusing Kabul of sabotageing them.

Focus on Regional Security

Despite its closer ties with the Taliban, Moscow is currently standing pragmatic, seeing developments and not removing the group from its terrorist list yet. President Putin said he hoped the Taliban would fulfil their promises to restore order. It is important not to let terrorists pour into neighbouring countries,” he said.

The main factors forming Russia's policy are regional stability and its painful history in Afghanistan. It wants safe borders for its Central Asian allies and to prevent the spread of terrorism and drug trafficking.

When the U.S. targeted the Taliban after the 11 September attacks and established bases in former Soviet states in the region, Russia initially welcomed the move. But relations quickly tenseed.

At the beginning of this month, Russia held military exercises in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with the aim of securing Central Asian countries, some of which are Moscow's military allies.

Last month Russia received Taliban guarantees that any Afghan profit would not threaten its regional allies and that they would continue to fight against IS militants.

Russia's bitter memory of war

Russia stresses there is no interest in sending troops to Afghanistan, and it is not difficult to understand why. It waged a bloody war and, many would argue, meaninglessly there in the last years of the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

What began as an invasion of 1979 to support a friendly regime lasted nine years and cost the lives of 15,000 Soviet personnel.

He turned the USSR into an international front, with many countries boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It became a massive burden for the devastated Soviet economy.

As the Soviet Union installed a government in Kabul led by Babak Carmal, U.S.A., Pakistan, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia supplied money and weapons to the mujahidei, who fought Soviet troops and their Afghan allies.

Many who were killed were teenage recruits of the Soviet army, and war brought home a sense of how few Soviet authorities cared for their people. War is widely thought to have sped up the end of the Soviet Union, at least in part, inciting disappointment with its rulers.

The war ended with a shameful military withdrawal in February 1989.

Fear of the Future

Russia may have given the impression that it was prepared for the cleansing of the ruling Taliban, but some experts believe Moscow was as surprised as everyone else.

“We can't talk about any strategy from Moscow”, says Andrey Serenko from the Russian Centre for the Contemporary Study of Afghanistan, which sees the decision being taken over the pride. “Moscow is concerned about the delay in remodating regional architecture. ”

Others in Moscow are careful about what Taliban rule can bring.

Andrei Kortunov, head of the Council of Russian International Affairs institute, believes they will fight to control the whole country, particularly the north, and this could threaten Russia and its neighbours.

Perhaps, some al-Qaeda cells, perhaps Isis, headquartered in Afghanistan, would trigger several actions in Central Asia”, he says.

He also fears a sharp deterioration of the Afghan economy, which could cause further instability.