Ukraine's Key Role in the Fall of Syria
Has my Crocus analysis been vindicated?
Just before bed reports emerged that the embattled Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, had stepped down and potentially been killed in a plane crash. The State Department finally got their man. What's odd is just how quiet Western media has been about the direct role played in the toppling of Assad by Ukrainian special forces.
Their involvement raises bigger questions about Ukraine's potential involvement in the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow.
The Kyiv Post has confirmed that fighters of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), formerly Jabbat Al-Nusra, Al-Qaida’s Syrian branch, were trained by special forces operatives of the Khimik Group, part of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR). Their presence in Syria was initially revealed in March, when Khimik Group operators were geolocated in the Golan Heights, ambushing Wagner troops alongside unnamed Syrian rebels. Who exactly these rebels were was not revealed at the time, and the US media all but ignored the story.
This means that Ukrainian military intelligence was on the ground in Syria, in the vicinity of the very ISIS elements who claimed responsibility for the attack on Moscow, in March 2024. While this could be chalked up to coincidence, the reality is that the Ukrainians have been working with Syrian jihadists since the very start of the Russian SMO.
While Turkey was playing neutral and hosting the initial round of Russo-Ukrainian peace talks in March 2022, they were simultaneously transferring fighters from HTS, ISIS, and other National Liberation Front fighters in Syria to Ukraine. These forces comprise multiple battalions of Ukraine’s well known International Legion.
Then there’s the issue of how many ISIS commanders the SBU has allowed to settle in Ukraine - despite vehement protests from the CIA. Reports indicate that one such commander, arrested under an Interpol warrant for extradition to Moscow, was let free by the SBU and flown to the Republic of Georgia. And while none of these developments in and of themselves implicate Ukraine in the Crocus City Hall attacks, it behooves us to reanalyze the narrative in light of this information.
The official line is that Tajik fighters from Islamic State - Khorasan (IS-K) launched an attack on Moscow and were later caught on the M3 highway near the Kursk-Belgorod border. During interrogation, they claimed that they were to receive 500,000 rubles a piece after the operation. This last part alone is highly unusual, most ISIS attacks have been suicide attacks. The point is to inflict as much carnage as possible and go out in a blaze of glory for Allah, not allah-ta cash.
That aside, why not flee towards the heavily Muslim republics of Central Asia? If IS-K had the network to get them from Tajikistan to Moscow, couldn’t that same network get them back? Instead, they headed towards the most heavily monitored border in the world. Why? To answer that question, it may help to look at which unit was manning the Belgorod/Kursk sector in March 2024.
You may remember the many glowing reports from that time about Ukraine’s Russian Volunteer Corps and their charismatic leader, Ilya Ponomarev. For most of February and March they were launching small scale incursions into Russia, hitting Russian patrols and supply convoys in the Belgorod/Kursk sector. They would have had intimate knowledge of weak points, and where exactly to exfiltrate a small team from the Russian side. Furthermore, any diversionary attacks launched wouldn’t look suspicious due to the operational tempo at that time. But what about motive?
Ponomarev served in the Russian Duma before going into exile, and now commands Ukraine’s Russian partisans. He has made headlines for his repeated inflammatory statements, claiming the only way to win the war is to unleash a wave of violence across Russia, leading to Putin’s overthrow - you see where I’m going with this. Ponomarev believes that should Putin be overthrown, he would be swept into power. What’s more is he has also claimed responsibility for multiple terrorist attacks and targeted killings on Russian soil - including the murder of Daria Dugina, daughter of Putin’s former advisor, Alexander Dugin.
If Crocus Hall was organized by Ukrainian intelligence then it's hard to imagine a more perfect fall guy than Pomonarev. He offers one last link in the chain of plausible deniability, as he has on a dozen other occasions. Pomonarev’s men were perfectly placed to get them across the border, get them paid, and moved to Syria. If things really went south and someone was meeting the firing squad, well, dasvidaniya Ilya.
Frankly, the idea that this was IS-K acting alone is absurd. IS-K leadership had released statements telling its fighters to let the “crusader against crusader wars” run their course. There’s simply no motivation for carrying out the attack. The motivation for Ukraine, by contrast, is evident and was parroted by Western media within hours of the attack: “it’ll make Putin look weak and he will have to act; he’ll have to divert resources from Donbass to other fronts.” What was the motivation for the Kursk Offensive again? To force Russia to divert resources from Donbass to another front.. What did Kyrylo Budanov, head of the HUR, claim to be the motivation for their operations in Syria? You guessed it!
The reality is that Ukraine can’t win on the battlefield. They know this, so they’re looking for a wunderwaffe. Unfortunately that wonder weapon is the murder of innocent civilians in Russia and now Syria. It remains to be seen whether the attack was carried out by the SBU or HUR, former ISIS fighters and commanders in Ukraine or those they’re leading in Syria.
What is clear is that there’s now a concrete connection between the Ukrainian intelligence agencies and the terrorists who set Moscow ablaze, and no one is talking about it. The Deep State wants to leave Trump with a Gordian Knot he can never untangle while simultaneously punishing any player who has opposed their will abroad. Their next target, is Georgia.
Stay tuned.