Former Afghan President Sees Russia as Key to Peace With Taliban

“Russia appears to have stepped up engagement with the Taliban, adopting the stance that the Taliban is preferable to other violent extremist groups in the region,” said Emily Winterbotham, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. “However, Moscow’s influence over and engagement with the Taliban is often overstated -- other efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table through Pakistan or even China have failed; there is no reason to think that Russia should have greater leverage.”