We took notice of the July 25 report by CNN, “Videos suggest Russian government may be arming Taliban”. Distorting the facts to support these groundless attempts to accuse Russia of military cooperation with the Taliban that the US side has made since spring, CNN published videos demonstrating some small arms as “evidence” of the alleged links between Russia and the Taliban. Its journalists admit themselves that it is absolutely impossible to establish the origin of these arms because the brands of their producers are totally absent and serial numbers removed.

Moreover, the arms shown on video are standard. It is common knowledge that they were produced both in Russia and other East European countries. It is also widely known that in the early 2000s the Americans themselves brought them from East European countries directly to Afghanistan on a mass scale.

We are urging the US media to stop their pointless efforts to create evidence to back up their insinuations about Russian defence cooperation with the Taliban. We would like to emphasise again that Russia does not support the Taliban. But we are working to implement a relevant resolution of the UN Security Council. This resolution was adopted at the proposal of the Afghan Government and provides for the Taliban’s inclusion in the political process provided it recognises the current Constitution of Afghanistan, renounces violence and stops cooperating with terrorists.

We would like to remind these “experts” from CNN that the Taliban is part of the population of Afghanistan and it is hard to imagine that the conflict can be ended without them, especially considering the ruins the country was left in by the NATO forces that did not resolve a single issue in the decade they were there. Quite the contrary, during their “work” the terrorist and drug threats have substantially grown in Afghanistan – ISIS has appeared while local drug production increased more than ten times.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/asia/taliban-weapons-afghanistan/index.html