Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country with four vehicles and a helicopter full of cash, the Russian embassy in Kabul said Monday.
The embattled leader left the presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday to the insurgent Taliban fighters who had toppled his government.
“To avoid bloodshed, I thought it would be better to leave,” Ghani, 72, said on Facebook in his first comments after his departure.
The former World Bank academic — who holds a doctorate from New York City’s Columbia University — didn’t say where he was going, but Al Jazeera reported later that he had flown to Uzbekistan.
“As for the collapse of the (outgoing) regime, it is most eloquently characterized by the way Ghani fled Afghanistan,” Nikita Ishchenko, a Russian embassy spokesman in Kabul, was quoted as saying by Russian state-owned news outlet RIA, Reuters reported.
“Four cars were full of money, they tried to stuff another part of the money into a helicopter, but not all of it fit. And some of the money was left lying on the tarmac,” Ishchenko was quoted as saying.
