Did the Soviet Union take all of its military equipment from Afghanistan after the Soviet-Afghan War?

Contrary to a claim on social media, Soviet Union armed forces abandoned some of their equipment in Afghanistan after the Soviet-Afghan War, which lasted from 1979 to 1989.

The social media claims coincided with reports that military equipment used by the U.S. and supplied to the Afghan military was left in Afghanistan as American troops withdrew and the Taliban took over the country.

Barnett Rubin, a senior fellow at the New York University Center on International Cooperation, told Lead Stories a big contrast between the Soviet and U.S. withdrawals from Afghanistan was the geographical difference. Soviet armed forces only had to transport equipment across the river border between Afghanistan and then-Soviet Uzbekistan. U.S. troops had a much greater distance to cover.

"If the US could drive its equipment across a bridge, I am sure we would. But there is geography to consider," Rubin said.