Hundreds of ‘Ukrainian experts’ training Syria-based extremists in drone warfare: Report
The Cradle, September 17, 2024 —
Ukraine has reportedly helped smuggle large quantities of drone parts into Idlib under the guise of commercial goods.
A group of 250 Ukrainian military experts has arrived in Syria’s northern Idlib governorate to train extremist militants in the use and manufacture of drones, a source told Sputnik on 17 September.
“There is confirmed information that the number of Ukrainian military experts who arrived in Idlib has reached about 250, they have been distributed to industrial workshops and several sites in the city of Idlib and the countryside of Jisr al-Shughur, to manufacture drones,” the source said.
“The Ukrainian military is training militants affiliated with the Turkistan Islamic Party under the command of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham for the use of drones, and technologies to develop them with regard to the ability to increase flight speeds, photography and targeting,” it added.
The source goes on to say that hundreds of drones “were shipped to Idlib in batches as spare parts and [under the guise] of commercial civilian goods.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on 12 September, accused Ukrainian intelligence agents of “actively recruiting Islamist militants” in northwest Syria and the Sahara and Sahel regions of Africa “to carry out terrorist operations.”
Days earlier, Turkish newspaper Aydinlik reported that Ukrainian government representatives recently met with members of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, in Idlib to discuss a drones-for-fighters deal.
The newspaper said that in exchange for the release of fighters from HTS prisons – which Kiev plans to enlist in the fight against Russian forces – Ukraine offered 75 drones to the extremist organization.
Over the past two years, there have been numerous reports of HTS and ISIS militants being sent from Syria to fight Russia in Ukraine.
In July 2022, Sputnik cited a source as saying that the CIA was recruiting ISIS fighters and training them in preparation for deployment to Ukraine. The outlet had reported months earlier that scores of HTS fighters were being released from prisons in Idlib to be sent to the Ukrainian battlefield.“
“The Kiev regime has been in contact with terrorists for a long time, and Ukrainian authorities themselves have already become an international terrorist group,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week.
The Nusra Front captured Idlib from Syrian government forces in 2015 after a bloody battle.
Following a Qatari-sponsored effort to rebrand it and separate it from Al-Qaeda, the group became known as HTS in 2017.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), mentioned by Sputnik’s source, fights under the command of HTS. It was responsible for a drone attack on a Syrian military college in Homs on 5 October last year, which killed dozens during a graduation ceremony.
The operations of the Syrian air force against positions of HTS and other groups in Idlib have intensified since then.