Putin warns Afghanistan is directly linked to Russian security

Russia stepped up contacts with the Taliban after United States has decided to withdraw from Afghanistan and declared last week, after the fall of Kabul, that members of this militia “restore order” in the country.

Moscow, which in Soviet times occupied Afghanistan for a decade and fought Washington-backed Islamist guerrillas, kept its embassy open to Acceptance and plans talks with the Taliban.

Russia has no border with Afghanistan, but fears instability in the region, where Islamism spread under the previous Taliban regime until it was overthrown by an invasion led by the United States in 2001.

Radical Islamism is one of the greatest enemies of Russia, which has fought two wars against it in Chechnya and still fights it in the Russian Caucasus, Syria and Libya.

Russia sees jihadist group’s possible growth in Central Asia as a threat Islamic state (EI), which he crushed in Syria and that he is a rival of the Taliban.

“We don’t want militiamen to come and pass themselves off as refugees. We don’t want any recurrence of what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s,” Putin said, the agency reported. Russian press Sputnik.

“No one wants to go back to Afghanistan now, but we don’t want criminal elements coming from there, and we don’t want Syria either. We are doing everything possible to ensure that Syria is not a hotbed of terrorism, ”added the Russian president.

Putin has had talks with the German Chancellor in recent days, Angela Merkel, and the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to assess the situation after the Taliban conquest.

Russia has offered to mediate talks the Taliban are having with former officials of the ousted Afghan government, which collapsed when Islamist rebels took control of Kabul, the Afghan capital, on August 15.