Russia Offers To Fly Afghans Out of Kabul with Airliners

The Taliban grants Russian airliners access to Kabul Airport to evacuate Afghan asylum seekers.

A Russian government Tupolev Tu-214 recently carried diplomats out of Afghanistan. Russia has offered the services of its airlines to help asylum seekers settle in third countries. (Photo: Vladimir Karnozov)

August 19, 2021

Russia is ready to render “civil aviation services” on the evacuation of Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban and seeking asylum elsewhere, Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova said on Thursday. The offer follows intensive diplomatic efforts that involved telephone talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his counterparts in Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, France, and Italy.

“In the view of the worsening situation in the Kabul international airport and the inability of the Western powers to take their citizens and servicemen out—not to mention the Afghan nationals and their family members who served them over the past years—we are ready to help them out. To prevent worsening of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, we are ready to provide services of the Russian civil aviation sector to carry any number of the Afghan citizens, including women and children, from Kabul to any foreign country willing to accept and settle them,” Zakharova said during the ministry’s regular press briefing.

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