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12/18/2024 Ukraine provided HTS extremists with 150 drones ahead of Syria takeover: Report By: The CradleRead NowKiev has maintained close ties with the former ISIS and Al-Qaeda militants currently in control of Syria since the start of the war with Russia in 2022  The Ukrainian government provided fighters from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) extremist armed group with “about 150 first-person-view drones” and at least 20 experienced drone operators in the lead-up to the flash offensive that ended with the fall of the Syrian Arab Republic. According to sources who spoke with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Kiev “sought to undermine Russia and its Syrian allies” by arming the UN-designated terrorist organization. The drones were delivered “four to five weeks ago,” Ignatius reports. As early as September, Turkish media reported on the presence of Ukrainian specialists in Syria training the former ISIS and Al-Qaeda militias in control of Idlib on the use of drones. “A delegation from Ukraine went to Idlib in recent months and met with the leaders of the terrorist organization,” Turkish newspaper Aydinlik reported on 9 September, adding that the operatives from Kiev requested the release of several Chechen, Georgian, and Albanian militants held in HTS prisons in exchange for dozens of drones. “HTS accepted the conditions … and some radical figures were released from their prisons,” Kurdish sources told Aydinlik. Days later, Sputnik reported that 250 Ukrainian military experts arrived in Idlib to train the extremists in the use and manufacture of drones. “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,” the report highlighted. “There is information that Ukrainian envoys, those of Ukrainian intelligence, are in the Idlib de-escalation zone on the territory of Syria, where they are recruiting militants of Jabhat al-Nusra, now called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to involve them in new hideous operations planned,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in September. Collaboration between the extremist armed groups currently in control of Syria and the Ukrainian military has been ongoing since 2022, when Russian media revealed that scores of HTS and ISIS militants were being sent to Ukraine to fight alongside Kiev’s forces against Russia. AuthorThe Cradle This article is produced by The Cradle. Archives December 2024
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