Russia removes Taliban from list of banned terrorist groups

MOSCOW: Russia´s Supreme Court on Thursday removed the Taliban´s designation as a “terrorist organisation”, a symbolic gesture aimed at building friendly ties with Afghanistan´s de facto rulers.

Moscow, which called the US withdrawal a “failure”, has taken steps to normalise relations with the Taliban authorities since then, seeing them as a potential economic partner and ally in fighting terrorism.

“The previously established ban on the activities of the Taliban -- included on the unified federal list of organisations recognised as terrorist -- has been suspended,” Supreme Court Judge Oleg Nefedov said in a ruling, according to the TASS state news agency.

“The decision enters into legal force immediately,” he added. The Taliban authorities praised the move as a “significant development in relations between Afghanistan and Russia” in a foreign ministry statement.

“With this decision, the only remaining obstacle to further political and economic cooperation between the two countries has been removed,” Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said in a meeting with Moscow´s ambassador to Kabul, Dmitry Zhirnov, according to the statement.

Russia´s Prosecutor General asked the court to remove the group´s “terrorist” designation last month, following several trips to Russia by top Taliban officials. A Taliban delegation attended Russia´s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg in 2022 and in 2024, and the group´s top diplomat met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow last October.