Question: Could you comment on the decision to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organisations?

Sergey Lavrov: The Taliban hold the real power. Like the People’s Republic of China, we have never closed down our embassy there. The Afghan Ambassador presented his credentials to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing along with other ambassadors. Kazakhstan has recently decided to remove them from the list of terrorist organisations. We are going to do this, too. The UN Security Council did not declare the Taliban a terrorist organisation. There are twelve to fifteen specific persons on the list.

But the main point is that they are the real power. We, like our allies in Central Asia, care about Afghanistan. This process reflects accepting reality.