High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! There are estimated to be 1,500 Russians living in Afghanistan. In the 1960s and 1970s, due to cooperation between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, there were roughly 10,000 Russian expatriate engineers, interpreters, construction workers, and other similar professionals living in the country, a figure which had grown to 15,000 by the eve of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. However, they mostly left the country during or after the war. There was some Russian-language media, but it closed down during the period of Taliban government.