Russian parliament passes bill that will allow Moscow to decriminalise the Taliban

The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, passed a bill that would allow organisations to be temporarily removed from Russia’s list of terrorist organisations on Tuesday, state-affiliated news agency Interfax reported.

The bill, which was passed in its second and third readings, will establish a procedure allowing a court to “temporarily remove” organisations from that list, a move lawmakers have not hidden was intended to allow the government to engage with Afghanistan’s de facto leadership.

The Taliban is banned in Russia despite Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, repeatedly meeting with members of the Taliban over the past several years.

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said in November that it was “high time” to remove the group from the list. “Whether you like it or not, the Taliban is in charge of Afghanistan, and now we will be able to cooperate with it on an absolutely legal basis,” Slutsky said.

The legislation must still be voted on by the upper house, after which it will be signed into law by Vladimir Putin.

The Taliban was added to Russia’s list of terrorist organisations in March 2003, based on resolutions by 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, though the group has not been recognised as the legitimate Afghan government by the West.