Russia has accused the US military of being the chief sponsor of Taliban militants in Afghanistan, saying that during the active presence of US-led NATO forces in the country, the production and distribution of narcotics had drastically surged there.

AVA- The accusations were raised by Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. She was responding to earlier US claims that Russia was collaborating with the Takfiri militants - what the official said was meant to mask America's own “sponsorship of the Taliban” in Afghanistan.
Zakharova said Russian had limited contacts with the Taliban but said this was meant to ensure the safety of Russian citizens in the country and to support the stalled Afghan national conciliation process.
She said there was already evidence of US sponsorship of Taliban and emphasized that several probes conducted by special committees of the US Congress testified to that. Instances of this, Zakharova said, were reports that acknowledged certain portions of US weapons that had been reported “stolen” or fallen into “wrong hands” had in fact reached the Taliban.    
The official recalled a 2016 report by then US defense secretary in which he had revealed that 1.5 million items of American weaponry had disappeared in Afghanistan and Iraq. Zakharova emphasized that armaments written off by the Pentagon as inventory losses could be used to equip “an entire army,” Moscow-based Sputnik International reported.
US sponsorship of terrorism in Afghanistan has also been underlined by the country’s previous president Hamid Karzai, who accused the US last November of collaborating with the Deash terror group in his country.