A Taliban soldier guards a truck delivering pomegranates to Russia for the first time in years, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 16 November 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/STRINGER

The Russian Supreme Court ruled to decriminalise the Taliban, the radical Islamist movement that has controlled Afghanistan since 2021, during a closed-door hearing on Thursday, state news agency TASS reported.

The ruling, which follows a request from the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office and came into immediate effect on Thursday, “temporarily removes” the organisation from Russia’s register of terrorist organisations, to which it was added more than two decades ago.

The Russian parliament passed legislation in December allowing the removal of a group from Russia’s list of terror organisations if it has “ceased activities aimed at promoting and supporting terrorism”. The law was specifically amended to allow Russia to engage legally with Afghanistan’s de facto leadership, Russian politicians said openly at the time.

Russian diplomats, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, have met with Taliban representatives on several occasions since the group’s return to power in Afghanistan, and last year both Russia’s Foreign Ministry and Justice Ministry submitted a formal recommendation to Vladimir Putin that he remove the group from the terror list.

The Taliban was added to Russia’s list of terrorist organisations in March 2003, based on resolutions adopted by both the UN Security Council and Russia’s Supreme Court. In 2021, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in its entirety following the hurried exit of US forces, despite not a single country recognising the group as the legitimate government of Afghanistan to date.