Almost no one recognizes the Taliban. But Russia appears set to start.

As Russia’s showcase economic forum, presided over by President Vladimir Putin, got underway in St. Petersburg in early June, an unusual thing happened.

A delegation from Afghanistan’s Taliban government took full part in the conference and talked up a range of economic cooperation opportunities with Russian companies. This, despite the group being listed as a “terrorist organization” in Russia, with any public contact with them remaining a criminal offense.

Indeed, at least one Russian journalist is currently in prison, awaiting trial, for having penned words deemed supportive of the group. Russia, along with the United Nations and most of the world, remains officially unwilling to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

Nonetheless, the sight of a Taliban delegation wandering the halls of the exhibition center, rubbing shoulders with Russian officials and giving interviews to the media, highlighted that political realities are fast overtaking Moscow’s previous reluctance to engage with the group. And Mr. Putin gave the signal that an official change in course is imminent.

“We have always believed that we need to deal with reality. The Taliban are in power in Afghanistan,” he told journalists. “We have to build up relations with the Taliban government.”

Moscow never closed its embassy in Kabul, despite the lack of official relations, and low-level contacts have since been steadily on the rise. Russia’s foreign and justice ministries have begun lobbying to have the Taliban’s “terrorist” status removed and experts say that step is probably imminent.

“It’s not a matter of whether to recognize the Taliban or not,” says Andrey Klimov, deputy head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament. “Afghanistan is a nearby country, and what happens there inevitably affects us and our neighbors. ... It’s just an objective situation. People may accuse us of dealing with an unsavory regime, but many Western countries also deal with unpleasant regimes.”

“The Taliban is less dangerous than ISIS”

Security cooperation likely tops the agenda in secret talks between Moscow and the Taliban, experts say.

A March terrorist attack that killed 145 concert-goers near Moscow was apparently staged by the group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), a Taliban rival based in Afghanistan. It has forced Moscow to shore up its security arrangements in former Soviet Central Asia, which is the source of a great many of the migrant workers who keep the Russian economy afloat.

“The issue is Russia’s vulnerable southern underbelly,” says Alexei Kondaurov, a former KGB major-general and terrorism expert. “Russia hopes to enlist the support of the Taliban against ISIS. The calculation probably is that supporting the Taliban and building relations with it is preferable, because the Taliban is less dangerous than ISIS.”

Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003 over their alleged ties with Chechen Islamists. Though that condition no longer applies, the Taliban’s links with other shadowy terrorist groups are still a potential obstacle to Russian recognition, experts say.

“This is a very peculiar moment for Russian diplomacy,” says Vladimir Sotnikov, an international affairs professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “Lifting the Taliban’s terrorist status is a relatively easy step, but full recognition will probably have to wait for the United Nations to accept the Taliban and seat it in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, there is much that can be done.”

Mr. Sotnikov says there are reasons to believe that today’s Taliban are not the same organization that ran Afghanistan before the United-States-led invasion in 2001, and there may be many constructive ways to engage with them.

For one thing, he says, the Taliban has kept their promise to crack down on opium production, and Russian law enforcement has noted a significant drop in narcotics transiting Russian territory.

With Western influence gone from Afghanistan, perhaps permanently, the door is open for the country to join Russian and Chinese-led regional groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and perhaps start forging business ties.

“There is a great deal of logic driving Russia’s opening to the Taliban,” Mr. Sotnikov says. “A lot of problems have to be solved. But on principle, political recognition can lead to beneficial security cooperation, humanitarian links, and even lucrative business dealings. The Taliban isn’t going away. It’s here to stay and we need to deal with it.”