MOSCOW, October 12 - RIA Novosti. The situation in Afghanistan poses a threat to Russia's national security, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Venediktov said on Tuesday.
"We have to state that the situation in this country poses a number of serious threats not only to regional security, but, above all, to the national security of our country," Venediktov said at a meeting of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"Among such threats... terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking. Mass migration, the export of radicalism, but also illegal arms trade, which in the context of recent events can take on completely unprecedented proportions, are more relevant for us now than ever," he added.
According to the Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, in order to counter this threat, it is necessary to consolidate efforts in both bilateral and multilateral formats, including within the framework of the SCO, the CSTO and the CIS.
In early August, the Taliban (the Taliban movement* is recognized as a terrorist in the Russian Federation and is prohibited) intensified their offensive against the Afghan government forces, on August 15 they entered Kabul and the next day declared that the war was over. For the last two weeks of August, there was a mass evacuation of Western citizens and Afghans cooperating with them from the Kabul airport, which was under the protection of the American military. On the night of August 31, the US military left the Kabul airport, ending almost 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan. In early September, the composition of the interim government of Afghanistan was announced, headed by Mohammad Hassan Akhund, who held the chair of the Foreign Minister during the first rule of the Taliban* and has been under UN sanctions since 2001.
* A terrorist organization banned in Russia
