BEIRUT (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2020) The Taliban militant movement does not have any information about the whereabouts of Soviet servicemen who went missing in Afghanistan during Soviet troops' intervention in the 1980s, Taliban Political Office spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sputnik in a phone interview.
After more than 30 years since the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, 264 military troops who took part in the Soviet-Afghan War are still missing. In early June, Russian media reported that previously unknown data on Soviet soldiers missing in the country emerged. In addition, search services managed to find out unknown details of two mass escapes of Soviet soldiers from captivity in 1986, about which even specialists know practically nothing.
"No, no, we do not have any information about them. We do not know, they may be or they may not be in rural areas, but we do not have official information about their whereabouts," Shaheed said when asked if the Taliban had any information on the whereabouts of the missing Soviet soldiers.
On December 25, 1979, the Soviet Union deployed a limited military contingent to Afghanistan, which was engulfed in hostilities after a coup in 1978 led the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power. In January 1980, Soviet forces became actively involved in combat operations against opposition forces, mostly supported by Pakistan.
After Afghanistan and Pakistan signed agreements in Geneva to resolve the Afghan crisis with the mediation of the United Nations, the Soviet Union began gradually withdrawing their troops from the country starting in May 1988. The last Soviet troops left on February 15, 1989.
