Russia is in contact with Taliban officials via its Embassy in Kabul, President Vladimir Putin's special representative on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said on Monday, a day after the Afghan government collapsed and the capital fell to the Islamist insurgent group.
According to him, the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) has already secured the outside perimeter of the Russian Embassy in Kabul.
"We have a relatively large embassy in Afghanistan, there are around 100 people in any case. Some of our staffers will be put on leave or evacuated in some other way just to not create such a large presence there," Kabulov said.
Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan further noted that there haven’t been any evacuation appeals from Russian citizens residing in Afghanistan. "There is another category, Russian citizen of Afghan decent, there are several hundreds of them. Some of them have already been evacuated via different passports when we airlifted our citizens due to the pandemic.," he added. "As of now, I have no information about specific appeals of Russian passport holders about an urgent evacuation."
On Sunday, the Taliban militants entered Kabul without a fight and occupied government agencies that were abandoned by government forces. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Later, the Taliban announced that it had taken control over all districts of the Afghan capital.
