Six killed in Russian embassy terrorist attack in Afghanistan

Two Russian diplomats and four Afghan nationals were killed in a terrorist attack in front of the Russian embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, according to CNN.

Reuters, meanwhile, cites official sources and informs that 10 people were injured by the blast.

The Kabul police stated that the attacker was shot dead by the Russian embassy’s guards as he tried to approach the gate pictured here.

According to Reuters, Russian Foreign Minister, Serguei Lavrov, declared that a set of explosives had gone off near the embassy entrance, killing two employees of the diplomatic mission.

“Two of our comrades have died. A set of measures were immediately taken to strengthen the protection of the outer perimeter,” Lavrov declared, per CNN.

Russia's Foreign Minister also declared that additional Taliban forces have been added to the embassy to secure the perimeter.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, citing unverified sources, claims that the attack occurred when a Russian diplomat went outside to call the names of people waiting for visas.

German news agency DW writes that Daluraman, the western Kabul neighborhood where the Russian embassy is located, has been the site of many terrorist attacks in the past.

CNN reports that so far an ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan has taken credit for the attack, but the authenticity of these statements could not be verified.

The Russian government, Reuters highlights, is one of the few that kept an embassy in Kabul after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021.

Although Moscow doesn’t officially recognize the Taliban government, they have been in talks with Kabul to reach a series of trade agreements.

The Kremlin criticized the US retreat of Kabul in 2021, claiming it was done “without any consideration of the consequences”, per DW.

Russia and Afghanistan have had a long, complicated history. The Russian Empire fought against the British over the control of Afghanistan for most of the 19th century in what was dubbed The Great Game.

Flash forward to the first half 20th century, Afghanistan adopted a position of non-alignment between the Soviet Union and the western powers. Kabul remained on good terms with Moscow, despite being led by a Muslim monarchy.

Afghanistan became a republic in 1973 and in 1978, a pro-Kremlin government came to power, executing president Mohammed Daoud Khan, in what was known as the Saur Revolution.

The assassination of Nur Muhammad Taraki, the paramount leader of the revolutionary government, by his political rivals led to a political instability that forced the USSR to invade Afghanistan in 1979.

The Soviet-Afghan War, instead of being the quick affair that Moscow assumed at first, became a 10-year-long proxy conflict.

On one side, there was the Soviet Union and its satellite Kabul government and the Mujaheddin, supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other western powers.

The failure of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan is generally cited as one of the factors that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the CIA's support of extremist religious groups against the Soviet-backed forces led to a civil war in Afghanistan through the 1990s.

The United States was eventually forced into their own military intervention into Afghanistan which, the USSR before them, ended up a massive failure.