Putin courts closer ties with the Taliban in pursuit of new allies

Searching to ease its isolation on the international stage, Russia is now turning to the Taliban with an offer to remove its ‘terrorist’ status

Russia has carried out its highest-level diplomatic engagement with the Afghan Taliban yet, as it seeks to expand its sphere of influence in Asia beyond its closest ally China.

Earlier this week Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council, reached Kabul carrying the message that Vladimir Putin wants to support the de facto administration – or, in Russia’s parlance, achieve a durable peace in Afghanistan.

The former Russian defence minister, who oversaw the invasion of Ukraine until May this year, met with Abdul Ghani Baradar, Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister for economic affairs, who said the Taliban administration needed Moscow’s help to ease the burden of Western sanctions. Shoigu also met with other senior Taliban officials, including its defence and interior ministers.

Baradar, who signed the Doha agreement marking the exit of US troops from Afghanistan, was a key figure during the 1980s in the Soviet–Afghan War in Kandahar and co-founder of the Taliban along with Mullah Omar.

Shoigu’s visit comes at a time when the Kremlin is considering removing the Taliban from Russia’s list of “terrorist organisations”, a move backed by Mr Putin in July when he called the Taliban an “ally in the fight against terrorism”.

The Russian leader is increasingly looking to Asia as he seeks more allies who, unlike the US and European nations, will not censure him of his invasion of Ukraine, experts say. And the Taliban craves international recognition of the legitimacy of its government in Afghanistan – as well as partners who won’t criticise its gender apartheid.

“Russia has historical ties with Afghanistan but [they are] not particularly pleasant all along,” says Oz Hassan, a national security expert from the University of Warwick. “Russia knows Afghanistan’s strategic importance, where it sits in Asia, balancing out Europe’s interests, US interests, Gulf interests, China’s interests, India’s interests – it just exists bang in the middle.

“So in other words, Mr Putin’s not coming at it directly, it’s part of a much wider chess game. The Russian president is a strategic actor, looking at global politics and he will try to see how many countries are on his pile rather than the US pile.”

Sending a close aide like Mr Shoigu to meet the Taliban sends a message in itself, says Aleksei Zakharov, an independent researcher in Moscow. “By sending Shoigu, the Kremlin wants to show to the new Taliban regime that Russia is seriously looking to develop closer relationships with them,” he said.

Developing new alliances in Asia has value to Russia beyond its “symbolic importance”, says Dr Hassan. “The [diplomatic] relationship with the Taliban could potentially lead to a longer term relationship economically – where Russia can tap into millions of dollars worth of economic projects which the US and Europe will miss out on,” he explains.

He suggests Russia could follow a similar model to its relationship with North Korea – a quid pro quo arrangement which includes the use of the Taliban’s battle-hardened fighters in Putin’s war on Ukraine.

These forces in Afghanistan can be recruited directly as mercenaries in the conflict, because you have a whole set of folks who need money and possess the skill set of having directly fought Nato for the longest period of time,” Hassan says.

Zakharov, a former research fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, says the first step in building such a relationship would be for Russia to remove the Taliban from its list of terrorist organisations. “This move by Mr Shoigu, verbally assuring the Taliban ranks in Kabul, shows that Russia is really moving ahead with that,” Zakharov says.