All news

Russia needs to maintain normal relations with any Afghan government, says special envoy

"Clearly, like many others, we have certain concerns related to the future military and political situation in the country, the implementation of fundamentals norms and human rights," Zamir Kabulov noted

MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. Moscow believes that there is a need to maintain normal relations with any government in Afghanistan, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Monday.

"We are already building [ties with the new authorities], our embassy in Kabul is working, and quite actively," he pointed out. "We established these ties a while ago. And we will continue to boost them," Kabulov vowed. "We need to maintain normal relations with any government in Afghanistan," the Russian presidential envoy insisted.

"Clearly, like many others, we have certain concerns related to the future military and political situation in the country, the implementation of fundamentals norms and human rights but at the same time, we need to take the cultural and religious background of the Afghan people into account and refrain from trying to impose anything on them based on our own view of democracy, order and other things," Kabulov emphasized.

According to him, Russia has always stressed that the Afghan people have their own perception of democracy, "their own traditional institutions that can be considered to be democratic." "And what others tried to impose on them over the past 20 years has collapsed before our very eyes," he added.

After US President Joe Biden announced the end of America’s 20-year-long military operation in Afghanistan in April, the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) ramped up their offensive and swept into Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul on August 15, without encountering any resistance and seized control of the entire city within a few hours. Later, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani stepped down and fled the country. Western nations are now evacuating their citizens, including diplomats, from Afghanistan.