The Taliban problem is increasingly aggravating disagreements between the president and the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Author: Andrey Serenko, head of the Center for the Study of Afghan Politics (Russia).
These days, our repeatedly voiced thesis about the absence of a unified Russian strategy regarding Afghanistan has once again been confirmed.
There is a “line of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, which is represented by Zamir Kabulov, Maria Zakharova, etc. Its essence is flirting with the Taliban regime and ignoring any, especially military, alternatives to it. To a large extent, this line is similar to the US strategy towards Afghanistan and this can be considered a manifestation of political irony. However, such funny coincidences have been recorded before, for example, in 2020-2021, when the Russian Foreign Ministry actively promoted Washington’s plans to conclude a political deal with the Taliban on the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan. Then the Russian Foreign Ministry recorded such a strategy as a success. True, it later turned out that the Americans were in a hurry to leave Afghanistan precisely on the eve of the future conflict in Ukraine. Therefore, the assistance of Russian diplomats to these plans can hardly be considered a strategic success for Moscow. But what's done is done.
There is a “line of the security forces” (Russian Security Council, etc.), which is increasingly shared by the President of the Russian Federation. Supporters of this line consider the Taliban not as partners, but as a deferred problem, that is, as yet an unproven enemy. Hence criticism of the Taliban is absent from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Today, President Vladimir Putin again addressed the Taliban, announcing ties between them and Kyiv - in terms of arms deals. Against this background, Maria Zakharova’s recommendations addressed to Sergei Mironov’s party to invite the Taliban to a round table in the State Duma, in which the leader of one of the resistance fronts, Akhmad Masud, will participate, look very ambiguous. By the way, no such recommendations were heard from Putin.
Of course, this is not accidental. Russia is reviewing its strategy towards the Taliban and Afghanistan, and this revision will increasingly weaken the Foreign Ministry’s line. Who can be advised to first invite resistance representatives to summits with the participation of the Taliban, and then demand this from Sergei Mironov?
