The recruitment of ISIS terrorists by the Russian FSB revealed by Russian journalists

@ElentirENG ES 3·26·2024 · 20:03 0

The Kremlin is making real contortions to falsely link Ukraine with terrorist attack in Moscow.

The involvement of the Russian FSB in a terrorist attack very similar to the Moscow attack
Attack in Moscow: Putin denied the threat and now his media hide the responsibility of ISIS

The changes in the version of the Kremlin and its propagandists about the Moscow attack

On the same day of the attack, Russian state media hid the claim by ISIS in an attempt to fuel the theory that Ukraine was behind the attack. Putin insisted on implicating Ukraine without there being any evidence in that regard and ignoring the messages from ISIS that claimed responsibility for the attack. Yesterday, in a new twist, Putin admitted that they were "radical Islamists" but pointing to Ukraine as the mastermind, again without any evidence to support the idea that Ukraine had any involvement in it.

Recruitment of ISIS terrorists by the Russian FSB

These changes in versions are forcing Putin's supporters to change their narrative about this attack, following Moscow's changing slogans. What Russian propaganists seem to ignore is that in May of last year, Meduza.io published an extensive investigation that brought to light the Russian FSB's attempt to recruit ISIS terrorists. Meduza.io is a media outlet formed by Russian journalists critical of Putin and based in Riga, Latvia.

Their investigation noted that "the FSB recruits former Islamic State militants and attempts to infiltrate them into Ukrainian battalions". Their main target was units of Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnic group disaffected by Russia, in order to gather intelligence information. Many of these recruitments are carried out directly in Russian prisons, in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Russian journalists published the documents that prove these practices

Meduza.io not only managed to contact the former ISIS terrorists who were contacted by the FSB, but also this group of Russian journalists published the documents delivered by the Russian intelligence service to those terrorists with the indications of what they had to do in Ukraine: "The FSB even drew up written instructions describing the stages of Kultanov's introduction into the Crimean battalion, and Baurzhan kept this document", noted Meduza.io. In addition, Meduza published the identity documents of these terrorists, sealed by Russia.

This investigation included the participation of Vera Mironova, an expert researcher in terrorist organizations who has carried out investigations in Chechnya, Dagestan, Syria and Iraq, where she accompanied the Iraqi special forces during several of their operations against the ISIS, and which currently advises the Ukrainian authorities in the fight against terrorism.

These recruited terrorists could try to infiltrate the United States

It must be taken into account that these ISIS terrorists recruited by the FSB could not only have infiltrated Ukraine, but also the United States. In March 2022, a high command of the US Armed Forces warned about the presence of GRU spies (the Russian military intelligence agency) in Mexico, pointing out that Russia has more spies infiltrated in that country than in any other.

Meduza.io recalled that from the fall of 2022 to May 2023, when that article was published, more than 21,000 Russians had tried to reach the United States from Mexico, most of them without identification documents. Vera Mironova pointed out that among those 21,000, US authorities detected 50 who have ties to the FSB. Meduza.io pointed out:

According to Vera Mironova, now some Russians on the US-Mexico border are surrendering to US border guards with the words: "The FSB sent us here to spy on the opposition and the journalists, but we don't want, I want to surrender; give us political asylum urgently, otherwise the FSB will turn our heads at home” (there is no additional evidence of this).

The mafia missions that the FSB entrusts to those recruited

In addition to the use of these infiltrators in intelligence missions, Meduza.io revealed other missions that the FSB would have entrusted to these terrorists recruited by Russia, talking about the specific case of Baurzhan Kultanov, a Russian citizen recruited by ISIS:

Among other things, Voronin [an FSB officer] persistently asked Kultanov to find a buyer for "fake dollars, fake documents, passports, stamps" and to find out "about the transfer of cryptocurrencies." "As I understand it, there was some money stolen and it was necessary to find cards to take them to Turkey, buy cryptocurrencies here and transfer them to Russia," says Baurzhan. "Vladislav promised me a percentage."

Another way to make money that FSB agents try to use is contract murder.

Agent Voronin twice entrusted Kultanov with orders to kill people. "It was part of Vladislav's business," says Baurzhan.

One day, Voronin connected Kultanov with “an Afghan who wanted to order another Afghan to live in Istanbul.” “The client gave me a photo and an address and told me that this person would have to be liquidated” , says Baurzhan. “ he did not name [the victim], but he is a great man: he was in the government [of Afghanistan] and then [after the Taliban captured the country] he fled to Turkey.”

Voronin entrusted the price negotiations to his agent. "Give me a million dollars and then we will divide it," says Kultanov, following the curator's instructions. “But when I announced this amount, the Afghan was lost: “I don't have that amount of money.” We never agreed on anything."

These curious ways of obtaining income seem more typical of a mafia organization than an intelligence service, but we must bear in mind that Russian intelligence (FSB, SVR and GRU) has links with the Russian mafia in different countries and uses it for certain "dirty" jobs, including money laundering, contract killings, arms and drug trafficking, extortion, coercion, threats and kidnappings, practices that are also carried out in Spain, as revealed by the British newspaper The Guardian in 2010.