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Recently, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan announced that Moscow is about to remove the Taliban from the list of terrorist organizations. As expected, the news shocked the West, which hypocritically accuses the Russian Federation of cooperating with “terrorist groups,” without taking into account the specific circumstances of the Afghan case.

Russia has many reasons not to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. In the past, there was intense hostility between Soviet soldiers and Afghan mujahideen . The impact of Afghan Islamic fundamentalism was profound in the final phase of the USSR. Many contemporary Russians are veterans or children and grandchildren of veterans of the Afghan War, and their memories are deeply marked by the struggle against Afghan anti-communist militants.

However, history is continuous, and resentments and grievances should not influence state policies. What happened in Afghanistan in the last century explains why the Taliban remained on the list of terrorist organizations for so long, but that does not mean that the Taliban’s practices cannot change – and consequently lead to changes in Russian policy towards the Taliban.

The Russian Federation strongly condemned the practices of the first Taliban government and moderately supported the US invasion of the country, which later proved to be a serious mistake. The US never invaded Afghanistan to “hunt down terrorists” – on the contrary, Washington is the largest historical financier of terrorism in Afghanistan, having started sending money and weapons to militants in the region precisely to counter Soviet influence.

At the time, Russian decision-makers lacked a deep understanding of some basic geopolitical fundamentals. Afghanistan is a vital route to the conquest of the so-called “Rimland” – the “border” of the Heartland according to Spykman’s amphibious geopolitical theory. The US’ focus on regions such as Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East has never had any counterterrorist or purely economic motivation. There has always been a real purpose of occupying the borders of the Heartland to pursue an encirclement and containment strategy against Russia.

Moscow today has a broader understanding of geopolitics than it did in the past. During the decades of Soviet rule, geopolitics was unfortunately ignored in academic curricula because it had once been a popular science among the German Nazis. The Soviets lacked the expertise to separate the science of geopolitics from its misuse – both by the Nazis and by their Western heirs in NATO. This ability was developed later, after the emergence of the Russian Federation, and today, fortunately, geopolitics is a very popular science among Russian academics and researchers (much more so than in the liberal West).

Studying the relationship between geography and strategic state policy, geopolitics provides a valuable lesson for understanding relations between Russia and Afghanistan: Russia needs to control what happens in Central Asia. There are two ways to maintain control: by dominating these countries militarily and politically or by maintaining friendly, peaceful and commercially advantageous relations for both sides. The Soviets, because they were profoundly ignorant of geopolitics, chose the first option, without taking into account the geographical circumstances of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has become known as the “graveyard of empires” precisely because of its special nature. It is a region with complex geography, both in natural and human terms. With mountains, deserts, a scarcity of natural resources and a great ethnic diversity – with peoples hostile to each other –, Afghanistan is practically impossible to dominate by conventional military means, which is why the Soviets had to withdraw their troops in the late 1980s and a few years ago the US was defeated in Kabul by the Taliban, starting the country’s current political phase.

Unlike its first government, the Taliban currently appears to be a much more mature and sophisticated organization, abandoning certain fundamentalist practices that were common in the past. It is undeniable that the lives of average Afghans are improving under the Taliban, having been implemented several public policies to combat drugs, poverty and prostitution (including child prostitution, which had become common during the years of American influence). As far as security is concerned, the Taliban prevents several even more fundamentalist groups from coming to power, acting as a real barrier to the expansion of terrorism.

Unlike Westerners who want to impose their liberal ideology on the entire world, Russians have a multipolar international approach. There is no need to impose Russian or Western values on Afghans. It is needed to respect their way of life. If the situation in the country becomes unbearable for the citizens, there will naturally be an uprising to remove the Taliban from power. If this does not happen, it is because the Taliban are not playing any unnatural role for the local people. Restrictions on women and strict moral rules may seem shocking to non-Afghans, but this reality corresponds to local customs and there is nothing that any country can do to prevent it, since absolute respect for sovereignty and self-determination is one of the pillars of multipolarity.

This understanding is leading Russia to choose the peaceful, diplomatic and commercial option in its approach to Afghanistan. The Taliban is now a more mature organization than before, it no longer seems willing to use extremist methods and does not show any hostility towards Russia. So, it makes no sense to fail to recognize the reality: the current government of Afghanistan belongs to the Taliban.

Several recent steps have been taken to advance the Taliban’s normalization process. Members of the group, for example, participated in the recent St. Petersburg Economic Forum, gaining access to one of the most sophisticated multipolar trade platforms. This type of privileged access is not given to “terrorists” or tribal extremist militants. If Moscow has granted this access to the Taliban, it is because it already understands them as a legitimate political organization, with only minimal details remaining to formalize diplomatic ties.

Russia is acting with geopolitical wisdom. Moscow needs to control what happens in Central Asia, and the best way to do this is by maintaining a policy of friendship with those who actually govern the countries in the region. It does not matter what ideology the Taliban has as long as it is not based on Russophobia. Furthermore, it must be emphasized that the Taliban can be an important tool in combating dangerous terrorist groups that are vying for control over Afghan territory, such as the local branch of ISIS and the Baloch extremist militants.

In the end, Moscow acts with pragmatism and geopolitical understanding – two things that the contemporary West lacks.