Media reports say the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office requested yesterday that the Supreme Court ends a ban on the Taliban’s activities in the country.

Russia’s foreign and justice ministries reportedly submitted an appeal last week to President Vladimir Putin urging the Taliban’s removal from Russia’s list of terrorist organizations.

Citing the Supreme Court’s press center, TASS reported yesterday that “Russia’s Supreme Court has received and initiated proceedings on an administrative legal claim by the Russian prosecutor general on suspending the ban on activities by the Taliban movement included in the unified federal list of organizations, including foreign and international ones, recognized as terrorist in accordance with Russian legislation.”

According to the Supreme Court’s press center, the Russian hearing is scheduled for April 17 and will be held behind closed doors. 

At the end of December, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the temporary suspension of a ban on the activities of an organization included in the unified list of terrorist organizations.

As Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Committee for International Affairs also leader of the LDPR, explained earlier, the new rules were aimed, among other things, at ensuring Russia’s legal interaction with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban movement (recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia).

Izvestiya reports that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on November 27, 2024, that without removing the status of terrorists from the Taliban, it is impossible to develop cooperation with Afghanistan in practice.

According to the law signed by the Russian president, the ban on the activities of such an organization may be suspended by a court decision based on a request by the prosecutor general or his deputy.  The suspension is possible if there is validated evidence that the organization, following its inclusion in the list of terrorist organizations, has ceased carrying out activities aimed at propaganda, justification, and support of terrorism, or committing other crimes.  A copy of the court’s ruling to suspend the prohibition of activities must be sent to the Federal Security Service (FSB) within five days after coming into force in order to amend the list of terrorist organizations.

The Taliban is a political and militant Islamist group that emerged in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, and has ruled in Kabul since the U.S. withdrew from the country in August 2021.

The Taliban movement was added to Russia’s blacklist in 2003 for backing separatists in the North Caucasus.  However, following the hardcore Islamist group’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, Moscow has progressively deepened its diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, hosting delegations for negotiations and even permitting its participation in international forums.