Russia reported a 500% increase in trade with the Taliban

Russia has sharply increased trade with Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. If in 2022 the trade turnover between the countries “was about $170 million, now it has already crossed the $1 billion mark,” Rustam Khabibullin, head of the Russian Business Center in Afghanistan, told RIA Novosti. “The main areas of export-import are gas, oil products, flour, wheat, sunflower oil, and recently dairy products,” he clarified, adding that Russia purchases metal products and construction materials from Afghanistan.

He linked such growth rates in trade with the rise to power of the Taliban and the US decision to end the almost 20-year military presence in the Islamic state in 2021. Khabibullin accused the Americans and their NATO allies of “impeding in every possible way the active development of economic and political relations” between Russia and Afghanistan. He added that Russia intends to further correct this situation, including by creating jobs and investing in local projects of the Taliban-led state. “These are the same plants, factories, agriculture,” Khabibullin clarified. According to him, the construction of the Kush-Tape water canal is of high interest, and several Russian companies are already issuing long-term leases for land plots for agricultural purposes next to it.

Last summer, the Taliban invited Russia to take part in the construction of the Termez-Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar railway, which was conceived as part of a transport corridor from India to the EU countries and was frozen due to lack of funding after the change of power in Afghanistan.