What are China and Russia up to in Afghanistan?

A coordinated pattern of engagement is starting to emerge

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Members of the Taliban delegation, including its head Abdul Salam Hanafi, Afghan acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and representative of the Taliban political office Anas Haqqani, attend a media briefing following international talks on Afghanistan in Moscow on Wednesday. © Reuters

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

When Russia hosted a meeting with senior Taliban leaders in Moscow this week -- after both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping sent junior deputies to an earlier G-20 leaders' meeting on Afghanistan -- it raised the question of whether this is part of a broader strategic plan for how Beijing and Moscow plan to work together on the world stage.

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