NUR-SULTAN, October 12. / TASS /. NATO avoids responsibility for its twenty-year presence in Afghanistan, inviting the republic’s neighbors to solve the existing problems, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia’s member countries.

"Along the same lines, one can note NATO’s desire to redeploy forces to other zones of the region such as Central, South or Southeast Asia, and also send Afghan refugees there. The alliance avoids responsibility for the consequences brought by its twenty years of experiments. The global community, especially Afghanistan’s neighbors, is invited to tackle the problems," Lavrov noted.

The Taliban (outlawed in Russia) embarked on a large-scale operation to take control of Afghanistan after the US had announced its intention to withdraw its forces in the spring. On August 15, Taliban fighters swept into Kabul without encountering any resistance, with Afghanistan’s then President Ashraf Ghani subsequently fleeing the country. On September 6, the Taliban gained full control over Afghanistan, and on September 7, the radicals announced the new interim government.