• Taliban officials say that the Afghan government has signed a preliminary deal with Russia.
• The deal includes buying oil products and wheat at a discount.
• The agreement would last for an unspecified trial period, after which both sides would sign a longer-term contract if they are happy.

Taliban officials say that the Afghan government has signed a preliminary deal with Russia to import oil products and wheat at a discount.

The deal includes buying a million tonnes of gasoline, a million tonnes of diesel, half a million tonnes of cooking gas, and two million tonnes of wheat every year, said Akhundzada Abdul Salam Jawad, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. He spoke to the news agency on Wednesday.

He said that Afghanistan should be able to start importing goods “soon.” The country’s economy has been in trouble since development aid was cut off after the Taliban took over last year.

The acting minister of commerce and industry, Haji Nooruddin Azizi, told the news agency Reuters that the agreement would last for an unspecified trial period, after which both sides would sign a longer-term contract if they were happy with the arrangement.

He wouldn’t say how much things would cost or how they would be paid for, but he did say that Russia had agreed to a discount on goods that would be shipped by road and rail to Afghanistan.

Azizi said that his ministry was trying to get a wider range of trading partners, and that Russia had given the Taliban government a discount compared to the average price of a good around the world.

Russia’s energy and agriculture ministries didn’t say anything right away.

But Russia’s Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, confirmed the agreements to send fuel and grain to Afghanistan on a temporary basis.

“There were, in fact, such deals. “As far as I can tell, they are preliminary. Now, both sides must sign specific [agreements] on volumes and types of products,” he told the Russian state news agency TASS on Wednesday.

The sanctions that the West put on Russia after it invaded Ukraine have hurt it a lot. To help its economy, it has had to boost exports to Asia, especially to China and India, because of the measures that have never been done before.

Russia, like every other country, does not officially recognise the government of the Taliban. Moscow, on the other hand, hosted leaders of the movement before they returned to power in August 2021. Its embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is one of only a few that are still open after the US-led foreign forces left quickly.

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