Days after a terror attack reportedly by the Islamic State killed at least 144 people in Moscow, Russia has said it had important matters to discuss with Afghanistan's Taliban leaders and was working to remove the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organisations.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Taliban are the de facto authority in Afghanistan and one way or another Moscow communicates with the militant group which stormed to power in 2021.
U.S. officials had said they had intelligence that the Moscow attack was carried out by the Islamic State Khorasan which is the Afghan branch of the terrorist group.