Russia hosts a meeting for Afghanistan consultations. The country led by the Talibani will become the new member of the “Moscow format”

The Russian capital will accommodate a new meeting of the “Moscow Format” for Afghanistan, a meeting in which a government delegation of the Taliban led by Foreign Minister Khan Muttaqi will be attended, announced on Thursday the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“On October 7, the seventh reunion of the” Moscow “consultation format will take place in Moscow, at the level of special representatives and high -ranking officials in Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and, of course, from our country, from Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan,” the statement said in the Uzbekistan. Russian.

The Afghan delegation will be led by the Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, who will have a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a meeting that “will focus on current issues on bilateral cooperation,” said the spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zaharova.

Russia's announcement about the new “Moscow Format” meeting occurs after Sunday the Taliban government announced that Russia has officially invited to join as a member of this format, created eight years ago.

This invitation is for the Taliban's movement a step forward in search of international legitimacy. The government led by Talibani took power in Kabul in 2021, after an offensive that forced the precipitated withdrawal of American troops, but was not officially recognized by any country. However, Russia, Pakistan, China, Iran and most of the Central Asia are de facto diplomatic relations with the Afghan authorities.

The “Moscow format” is a platform for Afghanist consultations created by Russia in 2017 to coordinate a regional response to the Afghan crisis, but it also seems to be an initiative conceived as a counterparty in the face of Western influence. Until the present time, the Taliban has participated in the meetings of this format only as guests.

For Russia, the Taliban are “allied in the fight against terrorism”

In July last year Russia became the first world power to officially recognize the Taliban government as a legitimate authority of Afghanistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin said then that he considers the Talibans as “allies in the fight against terrorism”, and at the end of the year he promulgated a law that allowed the elimination of the Taliban movement from the list of terrorist organizations and banned in Russia.

Also last year, in October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked the West to raise the sanctions imposed on Afghanistan and to take responsibility for the reconstruction of this country for decades of war.

Many of the current Taliban leaders fought in the 1980s in the War at that time against the Soviet Union.

The proximity between Moscow and Kabul accelerated after the attack committed near Moscow on March 22, 2024, when 145 people were killed in a concert hall of four terrorists of the group Islamic-Khorasan (ISIS-K), a branch of the Islamic State and is especially active in Afghanistan.