Turan Research Center

Though Afghanistan was never a primary focus for Moscow, the country’s profile has grown in importance for Russia following the return of the Taliban to power in 2021. The rapprochement between the two began as soon as US troops left. Initially characterized by cautious engagement, the bilateral ties settled into a relationship best described as pragmatic, culminating in the 2025 decision whereby Russia became the first country to officially recognize the Taliban as the legal rulers of Afghanistan. That step followed Moscow’s removal of the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations in April 2025, which cleared the legal path to recognition.

Infrastructure initiatives and military cooperation serve as the backbone of the burgeoning relationship. Afghanistan is increasingly seen as a vital link in the eastern branch of the sprawling International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Conceived in the early 2000s, the project was envisioned to link the Russian hinterland with Iran, the Gulf, and, ultimately, India. This pivot to Asia and the Middle East, however, did not fully materialize until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, when heavy Western sanctions pushed Moscow to re-orient its commercial ties from Europe to Asia.

While the Azerbaijan route (the INSTC’s western branch) remained critical, instability in the Middle East, and in Iran in particular, pushes Russia to diversify. Afghanistan emerges as an alternative transit corridor to Pakistan, one that would allow Russia to wedge itself into the expanding road and railway projects under discussion between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan on one side and Afghanistan on the other. Russia is especially keen to tap the Trans-Afghan Corridor, an ambitious, still-developing initiative that could link landlocked Central Asia to ports in southern Pakistan. Moscow regards the corridor as a prolongation of the INSTC’s eastern branch. Moscow also has a longstanding ambition to sell Russian gas to South Asia, which would need to transit Afghanistan. So far, however, major progress has not been achieved with Russian officials mainly hailing the project’s potential.

A security dimension is likewise driving Moscow’s engagement. On May 27, Russia and the Taliban government signedan agreement on military-technical cooperation on the sidelines of an international security forum in the Moscow region, concluded by Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu and the Taliban’s acting defense minister, Mohammad Yaqoob. Neither side released the text. Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, subsequently described it as a framework agreement centered on the repair and restoration of Soviet- and Russian-made equipment already in Afghanistan, one that could open the door to broader cooperation over time. Russia essentially wants to engage Afghanistan with minimal expenses and geopolitical commitments.

Afghanistan, however, has its own reasons to engage Russia and inflate the agreement’s importance. First, closer ties help puncture the international isolation the Taliban currently faces. Second, Russia is an arms exporter, and Afghanistan — reliant on a patchwork of Soviet and US weapons — needs new military capabilities. For Kabul, this is not only a matter of internal security: the country is locked in conflict with Pakistan and needs modern weaponry to meet external challenges, along with active military partnerships with major powers to help control its far-flung and poorly defended borders. The Pakistan angle matters especially. On landing in Kabul after signing the agreement, Yaqoob warned that Pakistan would “soon no longer dare” to attack Afghan territory.

Russia is most worried by instability along the border between Afghanistan and the Central Asian states, especially Tajikistan. Since late 2025, Tajik border guards have confronted a series of cross-border incursions. Some involved narcotics smuggling, but the deadliest have been attributed to militant activity: a clash on December 24, 2025 killed two Tajik officers, and in November a pair of drone strikes launched from Afghanistan killed five Chinese mining personnel and wounded five others. A December 2025 UN Security Council monitoring report found the Taliban’s denials that its territory is used for cross-border attacks “not credible.” The problem has drawn the attention of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Tajikistan is a member.

The CSTO plans to step up efforts to curb the instability fueled by suspected drug traffickers and armed groups along the Afghan-Tajik border. Afghanistan is “the main challenge within the CSTO’s Central Asian zone of responsibility,” according to Viktor Vasilyev, Russia’s permanent representative to the CSTO and chair of its Permanent Council for 2026. He conceded that attempts to engage the Taliban leadership on containing militant activity in northern Afghanistan have not produced the desired results, and said the bloc would sharpen its capabilities in border regions to neutralize the militant and extremist groups massing along Afghanistan’s northern frontier.

Moscow is equally concerned about extremist spillover into Central Asia. The threat is not abstract: Russia suffered one of its deadliest terrorist attacks in two decades at the hands of assailants from Central Asia. Moscow worries about Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) and its ability to use Afghan territory as a launchpad for strikes into Central Asia and Russia itself. Just a day before the agreement was signed, the Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, argued that ISKP had stepped up efforts to swell its ranks by drawing in members of other extremist groups and nationals from Central Asia. The December 2025 UN monitoring report lists ISKP alongside al-Qaeda, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Turkistan Islamic Party, and Jamaat Ansarullah among the groups operating from Afghan soil.

A further pragmatic draw is Afghanistan’s untapped mineral wealth. Undeveloped deposits of copper, lithium, and other critical minerals are enough to attract Moscow, and a foothold in Afghanistan’s large extraction projects would strengthen Russia’s hand against other major players — not least China, already the country’s largest foreign investor.

Russia’s push is driven less by ideological alignment than by economic and security calculation. Incremental engagement looks like the Kremlin’s only sensible option for managing the threats Afghanistan poses, and there is growing recognition in Moscow that the Taliban is unlikely to be dislodged and that its grip on power remains firm. Ignoring Kabul would serve Russian interests far worse. Even so, analysts caution that Moscow’s ability to deliver on any broader military commitments is constrained by the war in Ukraine and the drag of Western sanctions on its defense industry, while the cash-strapped Taliban is in no position to become a consequential arms client — reasons to read the current engagement as transactional rather than the start of a deep military partnership.

Russia’s engagement should also be read against the growing interest of other, mainly non-Western, powers in building commercial and infrastructure ties with Afghanistan. China, Iran, India, and the Central Asian states are all deepening their own outreach to Kabul. With Washington largely disengaged since its 2021 withdrawal, Moscow is moving to establish itself as a leading interlocutor and to keep pace with Beijing.

The economics reinforce the trend: bilateral trade reportedly exceeded $530 million in 2025, and Russian officials claim a 2.6-fold increase in the first two months of 2026.

For Russia, investment opportunities, security, and the prospect of effective north-south transport routes are the three motivating factors, amplified by wider geopolitical shifts across South Asia and the Middle East. Moscow is therefore unlikely to change course; if anything, bilateral relations will grow, though they will remain highly transactional. Its outreach to Kabul demands a careful balancing act: Moscow will stay out of Afghan-Pakistani tensions and will not sacrifice its expanding ties with Islamabad, which it increasingly regards as a key player in regional connectivity and security. Likewise, Pakistan values its relations with Moscow and, at least publicly, will continue to downplay the significance of Russia’s outreach to Afghanistan. Indeed, following the Russo-Afghan agreement, Islamabad and Moscow inked a document to curb illegal migration and drug trafficking. Russian FM Sergey Lavrov held a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart on July 22 in Manila, and in early August it was even announced that the Pakistani PM will be visiting Moscow soon.

What emerges, then, is less a strategic pivot than a calculated hedge. Moscow is buying itself a seat at every table in the region without committing the resources that would bind it to any single outcome, wagering that patient, low-cost engagement will compound as Western influence recedes and the Taliban's hold endures. The limits of that bet are already visible: Russia's leverage rests more on its capacity to convene and connect than on anything it can deliver in arms or investment, and a sharp escalation between Kabul and Islamabad would quickly reveal how little Moscow is prepared to spend to defend its position. For now the calculus holds, because Afghanistan is one of the few arenas where the costs of engagement stay low and the returns, in trade, transit, and counterterrorism cooperation, still run ahead of them. The question is whether that balance survives the moment Russia is asked to choose.

Emil Avdaliani is a research fellow at the Turan Research Center and a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia. His research focuses on the history of silk roads and the interests of great powers in the Middle East and the Caucasus.