Published 2 December 2024 at 10.00
Foreign. Not only Russia has been involved in the renewed fighting in Syria. Now Ukrainian media reports that Kiev, for its part, helped train the Islamists who have just captured Aleppo.
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An association of jihadist groups, led by the former al-Qaeda-affiliated group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has launched an offensive against Syrian government forces and taken over Syria's largest city, Aleppo.
Russia supports President Bashar al-Assad by bombing the terrorists from the air.
Now the Kyiv Post reports that the jihadists – who are supported by Turkey – should have been trained by Ukrainian special forces.
According to the newspaper, the jihadists are said to have received training from Khimik- group, a unit of the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service (HUR). The training should have included advanced tactics with drones and explosives, based on experiences from the war in Ukraine.
The Khimik group is said to have been responsible, among other things, in a specific case for an attack on a Russian military base in the southeastern outskirts of Aleppo on September 15, when Russian attack drones and “camouflaged improvised explosive devices” were destroyed, a military intelligence source told the Kyiv Post.
Some official confirmation of this has not come, but the head of HUR, General Kyrylo Budanov, has previously said that Ukraine aims to fight Russian interests globally.
– We will continue to kill Russians everywhere until Ukraine has achieved complete victory, Budanov said in an interview in May 2023.