On Tuesday, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia accused Ukraine of supporting militants in Syria fighting under the command of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot that led the takeover of Aleppo.
The accusation came a few days after the Kyiv Post reported that Islamist groups based in Idlib that are taking part in the offensive have received training from the Khimik group, a special unit of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (abbreviated GUR or HUR).
“Ukrainian military instructors from the GUR are present… training HTS fighters for combat operations,” Nebenzia said at the UN. He said HTS has “not only not concealed the fact that they are supported by Ukraine, but they are also openly flaunting this.”
The Kyiv Post report cited posts on Islamist social media sites and said the GUR has trained HTS militants on tactics developed during the Ukraine war, including the use of drones. The Kyiv Post also cited a Ukrainian intelligence source who claimed the GUR’s Khimik group was responsible for a September 15 attack on a Russian military base outside of Aleppo.
It was around that same time that Russian media reported that Ukraine had sent around 250 military specialists to Idlib to train extremist fighters. “The Ukrainian military is training militants affiliated with the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) 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,” a source told Sputnik on September 17.
TIP is a Uyghur militant group founded in Pakistan that seeks to create an Islamic state in China’s Xinjiang province and has a branch in Syria. The Kyiv Post report also mentioned TIP as one of the groups the GUR has trained.
