The Russian inhabitants has handed to the Kremlin whole carte blanche to train brutal, most punishment – no matter and wherever it takes
Let’s begin with the attainable chain of occasions which will have led to the Crocus terror assault. That is as explosive because it will get. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly verify this is without doubt one of the FSB’s prime traces of investigation.
December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, Gen Mark Milley, solely 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Submit: “There ought to be no Russian who goes to sleep with out questioning in the event that they’re going to get their throat slit in the course of the night time (…) You gotta get again there and create a marketing campaign behind the traces.”
January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC Information, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the highway map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.
January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press convention at night time in the course of an empty road, she guarantees “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for uneven battle.
February 22: Nuland exhibits up at a Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS) occasion and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and uneven battle. Which may be interpreted because the definitive sign for Budanov to start out deploying soiled ops.
February 25: The New York Instances publishes a narrative about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel doesn’t already know.
Then, a lull till March 5 – when essential shadow play could have been in impact. Privileged state of affairs: Nuland was a key soiled ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions obtained maintain of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her a method or one other – as a result of Russian intel would have inevitably related the dots.
But Nuland, actually, will not be “retired” but; she’s nonetheless offered as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and confirmed up lately in Rome for a G7-related assembly, though her new job, in concept, appears to be at Columbia College (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).
In the meantime, the belongings for a significant “nasty shock” are already in place, at the hours of darkness, and completely off radar. The op can’t be known as off.
March 5: Little Blinken formally proclaims Nuland’s “retirement”.
March 7: No less than one Tajik among the many four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his picture taken.
March 7-8 at night time: U.S. and British embassies concurrently announce a attainable terror assault on Moscow, telling their nationals to keep away from “concert events” and gatherings throughout the subsequent two days.
March 9: Massively well-liked Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That will have been the rigorously chosen event focused for the “nasty shock” – because it falls just a few days earlier than the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. However safety at Crocus was large, so the op is postponed.
March 22: The Crocus Metropolis Corridor terror assault.
ISIS-Okay: the last word can of worms
The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – just like earlier Ukraine intel terror assaults in opposition to Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: shut reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; after which a splash for the border.
And that brings us to the Tajik connection.
There appear to be holes aplenty within the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; supplied what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the 4 of them to shoot random folks in a live performance corridor; despatched half of the funds by way of Telegram; directed to a weapons cache the place they discover AK-12s and hand grenades.
The movies present that they used the machine weapons like professionals; photographs have been correct, brief bursts or single hearth; no panic in anyway; efficient use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, simply melting away, virtually in time to catch the “window” that will take them throughout the border to Ukraine.
All that takes coaching. And that additionally applies to going through nasty counter-interrogation. Nonetheless, the FSB appears to have damaged all of them – fairly actually.
A possible handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier recognized him as a handler for ISIS-Okay, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of many members of the Crocus commando informed the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to purchase the automobile for the op.
And that leads us to the large can of worms to finish all of them: ISIS-Okay.
The alleged emir of ISIS-Okay, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, because the Individuals have been spinning: he could also be at the moment holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.
But the true particular person of curiosity right here will not be Tajik Ghafari however Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the previous chief of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Troopers of the Caucasus”), who was preventing in opposition to the federal government in Damascus in Idlib after which escaped to Ukraine due to a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in one other a kind of traditional inter-jihadi squabbles.
Shishani was noticed on the border close to Belgorod throughout the current assault concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Name it one other vector of the “nasty surprises”.
Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He’s actually the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens labored carefully with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was nearly indistinguishable from ISIS.
Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the traditional “reasonable insurgent” marketed for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.
Among the 4 hapless Tajiks appear to have adopted ideological/spiritual indoctrination on the web allotted by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-Okay, in a chat room known as Rahnamo ba Khuroson.
The indoctrination recreation occurred to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the man who made the primary transfer to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-Okay and the CIA.
The issue is the ISIS-Okay modus operandi for any assault by no means contains a fistful of {dollars}: the promise is Paradise by way of martyrdom. But on this case it appears it’s Khurosoni himself who has authorised the five hundred thousand ruble reward.
After handler Buriyev relayed the directions, the commando despatched the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine could not have been their remaining vacation spot. One other international intel connection – not recognized by FSB sources – would have despatched them to Turkey, after which Afghanistan.
That’s precisely the place Khurosoni is to be discovered. Khurosoni could have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. However, crucially, he’s not the consumer.
The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs
Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been utilizing the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please because the first Chechnya battle within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. Milley and Nuland after all knew it, as there have been critical rifts previously, as an example, between GUR and the CIA.
Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian authorities post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections particularly with Idlib gangs, in addition to north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria after which ISIS-Okay. GUR routinely goals to recruit ISIS and ISIS-Okay denizens by way of on-line chat rooms. Precisely the modus operandi that led to Crocus.
One “Azan” affiliation, based in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, truly facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical help.
The FSB investigation is establishing a path: Crocus was deliberate by professionals – and positively not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-Okay, however by GUR. A traditional false flag, with the clueless Tajiks beneath the impression that they have been working for ISIS-Okay.
The FSB investigation can be unveiling the usual modus operandi of on-line terror, all over the place. A recruiter focuses on a selected profile; adapts himself to the candidate, particularly his – low – IQ; offers him with the minimal mandatory for a job; then the candidate/executor turn out to be disposable.
Everybody in Russia remembers that throughout the first assault on the Crimea bridge, the driving force of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,
As for ISIS, everybody critically following West Asia is aware of that’s a big diversionist rip-off, full with the Individuals transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the jap Euphrates, after which to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Undertaking ISIS-Okay truly began in 2021, after it turned pointless to make use of ISIS goons imported from Syria to dam the relentless progress of the Taliban.
Ace Russian battle correspondent Marat Khairullin has added one other juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle within the Crocus Metropolis Corridor terror assault (in English right here, in two elements, posted by “S”).
The FSB is correct in the course of the painstaking means of cracking most, if not all ISIS-Okay-CIA/MI6 connections. As soon as it’s all established, there will likely be hell to pay.
However that gained’t be the top of the story. Numerous terror networks usually are not managed by Western intel – though they may work with Western intel by way of middlemen, often Salafist “preachers” who cope with Saudi/Gulf intel businesses.
The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is extra like an exception – when it comes to direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will likely be very cautious in the case of immediately accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.
However even with believable deniability, the Crocus investigation appears to be main precisely to the place Moscow desires it: uncovering the essential intermediary. And all the things appears to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.
Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an additional clue. He mentioned the Crocus “curators” selected on goal to instrumentalize components of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely communicate Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation the place dozens of ethnicities stay facet by facet for hundreds of years.
Ultimately, it didn’t work. The Russian inhabitants has handed to the Kremlin whole carte blanche to train brutal, most punishment – no matter and wherever it takes.
