Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister has announced that trade volume between Russia and Afghanistan in the first two months of 2026 has increased approximately 2.6 times compared to the same period last year, reaching 500 million dollars. Alexey Overchuk made these remarks during a meeting with Neda Mohammad Nadim, Afghanistan’s Minister of Higher Education under the Taliban administration, at the ‘Russia and the Islamic World’ forum.<\/p>\n
According to Overchuk, Russian exports to Afghanistan grew 2.7 times, and Afghan imports from Russia increased 1.9 times in January and February 2026 alone. He emphasized that despite this growth, the current level of trade between the two sides remains “relatively modest,” with significant potential for further expansion.<\/p>\n
The Russian official added that according to Moscow’s statistics, bilateral trade in 2025 was around 326 million dollars, while Afghan figures estimate it near 500 million dollars. This discrepancy arises as the Taliban administration has yet to provide clear details about the mechanisms for recording and publishing trade data.<\/p>\n
Overchuk also stated that Afghan citizens still recall Soviet-made cars and trucks exported to Afghanistan over past decades and are eager for the resumption of such exports. The Soviet Union was a key economic partner of Afghanistan in previous decades.<\/p>\n
The Deputy Prime Minister noted that both parties discussed agricultural product exports, related sanitary control issues, signing a bilateral agreement in this sector, Russian energy exports, and areas for investment cooperation. These consultations come as the Taliban administration seeks to expand regional economic relations but continues to face political constraints and lack of official international recognition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trade between Russia and Afghanistan surged 2.6 times in early 2026, reaching $500M despite political challenges and limited international recognition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}