Russia and Pakistan shared polar opposite views on Taliban-led Afghanistan during Monday’s eighth meeting of the Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan, which first assembled a decade ago. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the Taliban’s return to power five years ago as a “liberation”, complimented its “fairly successful” governance, praised their country’s gradual economic development despite the odds, celebrated its war on drugs, and hailed its anti-terrorist capabilities.
Expanding upon the last-mentioned, he said that “Afghan security forces are waging an uncompromising fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups”, eliminating “hundreds of militants”, and “foiling” “a number of high-profile terrorist attacks”. Lavrov then declared that “Importantly, helping strengthen Kabul’s counterterrorism capabilities by providing material and expert assistance and maintaining contacts between intelligence and law enforcement agencies meets the interests of all of us.”
The last part of his remarks saw him “reiterating that the deployment of NATO military infrastructure in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries under any pretext whatsoever is categorically unacceptable.” Secretary of the Security Council Sergey Shoigu warned about this in an article in August 2025, which also warned about the transfer of terrorists to Afghanistan, and then he and Defense Minister Andrey Belousov brought it up in May at separate SCO events. The innuendo is that Pakistan is facilitating this.
The same goes for Lavrov’s warning in July that Western arms and ammo are being sent from Ukraine to ISIS-K in Afghanistan. Pakistan is the only state through which all of this could realistically transit to there. Pakistani Special Representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq shared a totally different opinion. He questioned whether the Taliban have truly helped ordinary Afghans and responded to its neighbors’ legitimate concerns before condemning it as a “regime” and accusing it of ties to several terrorist groups.
These include anti-Pakistani groups, the anti-Chinese ETIM, ISIS-K, and al-Qaeda. Sadiq then defended Pakistan’s strike campaign from February till now against what he described as terrorist-related targets. For what it’s worth, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi accused Pakistan of colluding with ISIS-K and former servicemen from the Western-backed Afghan government that the Taliban ousted, which he suggested have unsuccessfully tried to infiltrate across the border in a bid to destabilize his country.
Russia’s strongly implied latent threat assessment of Pakistan that was earlier described aligns with the Taliban’s explicitly stated one. Pakistan might thus soon lend credence to the recent report that India is financing the Taliban’s purchase of Belarusian drones with Russian approval due to their differences. Russia isn’t party to any alleged Indian proxy war on Pakistan through the Taliban, nor is its ally Belarus, but Pakistan’s US patron might exploit this false claim to convince it to arm Ukraine “in revenge”.
Russia’s Ambassador to Pakistan denied earlier reports to this effect in 2025, thus keeping their hard-earned rapprochement in recent years on track, but it could quickly collapse if the Kremlin obtains evidence that Pakistan is now arming Ukraine. So long as Pakistan doesn’t escalate its differences with Russia over Afghanistan to that point, then their ties should remain intact even if they soon chill, which is already happening among some Pakistanis on X who’ve begun criticizing and even trolling Russia.
