MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. The Taliban movement caused Russia less harm when it acted as a terrorist organization than the Western-funded public structures promoting the country’s division, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an op-ed for the Rodina (or Motherland) magazine.

"Let’s be honest: the Taliban movement, which remained blacklisted for a long time, caused Russia much less harm than the pseudo-scientific institutions working to destroy our country under the pretext of assistance to the oppressed," he pointed out.

"The only goal they have ever pursued is to divide the multi-ethnic people of Russia," Medvedev concluded.

In April, Russia’s Supreme Court suspended a ban on Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, which had previously been included in the list of terrorist organizations. The nationalist organization stopped acting as an international terrorist group after it came to power in Afghanistan in 2021.