Talks between Moscow and the Taliban administration on recruiting Afghan workers have stalled, and there is no prospect of the plan being implemented in the near future, Russia\u2019s presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Kabulov said the two sides had not yet moved on to discussing the details of the programme. He added that consultations had taken place, but the issue was complicated and had not yet reached a clear state of readiness.<\/p>\n
According to him, decisions on the plan fall more within the remit of Russia\u2019s migration and law enforcement agencies than its foreign ministry. Kabulov also stressed that there has been no progress in this area and that no agreement should be expected even by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
The idea of sending Afghan workers to Russia was raised earlier this year. If implemented, it could have met part of Russia\u2019s labour needs in the construction, transport and municipal services sectors. However, the suspension of the talks indicates that the plan has so far gone no further than discussion.<\/p>\n
According to reports, as of June 2025 about 100 Afghan nationals were working in Moscow, St Petersburg and Tatarstan as painters, welders and electricians. Previously, there had also been talk of sending around 1,000 more workers to work in agriculture and construction.<\/p>\n
One of the main obstacles to the programme is the requirement to obtain a work permit in Russia, as foreign citizens must demonstrate knowledge of the Russian language, history and laws. Lack of Russian language skills has been cited as a major barrier to sending Afghan workers.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Hassan Gul Hassan, the Taliban administration\u2019s ambassador in Moscow, told Izvestia that the timing of the workers\u2019 deployment was unclear, but, according to him, efforts to implement the plan were continuing. Nureddin Azizi, acting minister of trade and industry in the Taliban administration, had also previously said that the Taliban was studying the deployment of workers to Russia, but that the language barrier remained the main obstacle.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Russia has shown interest in hiring foreign workers to help address labour shortages in some sectors. However, migration procedures and labour regulations in the country are usually accompanied by language and administrative requirements that can make it difficult for foreign jobseekers, including Afghan nationals, to gain access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia and the Taliban administration have stalled talks on hiring Afghan workers, with language and permit rules blocking progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22542","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=22542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}