April 21, 2023
A
leaked top-secret US intelligence document has revealed that Ukrainian military
intelligence planned covert attacks against Russian forces in Syria through
Kurdish groups
Ukrainian
military intelligence developed plans to conduct covert attacks on Russian
forces in Syria, allegedly using secret Kurdish help to avoid implicating the
Ukrainian government. Details of the plans, which were halted in December by
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, come from a leaked top-secret US
intelligence document, the Washington Post reported on 20 April.
The Washington
Post claims it obtained the document from a cache of intelligence material
allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the
Massachusetts Air National Guard.
In 2015, the
Russian military intervened in Syria to prevent Damascus from falling to
Western and Gulf-backed extremist groups including ISIS and the Nusra Front.
Russian forces
have remained in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government since that
time.
Attacks on Russian
forces in Syria “might raise the threat level to the point where the Russians
would need to call in reinforcements,” which could force Russia to divert
resources from the war in Ukraine, noted Aron Lund, a Syria expert from the
Century International think tank.
The document
considered possible targets including Latakia’s Bassel al-Assad Airport, which
shares facilities with Russia’s Hmeimim Air Base (Hmeimim was the target of a
UAV drone attack in 2018), Russia’s naval base in Tartus, or oil and gas
infrastructure near Palmyra in Syria’s east and defended by the Wagner Group, a
private military company integrated within the Russian military.
According to the
document, Ukraine considered training operatives of the Kurdish-dominated
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to strike Russian targets and conduct
“unspecified ‘direct action’ activities along with UAV [unmanned aerial
vehicle] attacks,” the Washington Post noted.
The SDF was
created in 2015, when the US military partnered with the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units (YPG) to conquer areas then controlled by ISIS in Deir Ezzor
and Raqqa, including Syria’s most important energy and grain producing regions.
The Washington
Post noted further that, “As planning occurred last fall, the SDF sought
training, air defense systems and a guarantee that its role would be kept
secret in exchange for supporting Ukrainian operations. The leadership of the
SDF also forbade strikes on Russian positions in Kurdish areas, the document
says.”
However, SDF
spokesperson Farhad Shami rejected the allegations. “The documents that you are
talking about regarding our forces are not real; our forces have never been a
side in the Russian-Ukrainian war,” Shami said.
The Washington
Post report comes one day after Syrian Kurdish leaders expressed their
readiness to meet with the Syrian government, with the aim of reaching a
solution to the crisis in the country. The Kurdish offer came in the context of
Saudi Arabia’s recent efforts at reconciliation with Syria.
In an interview
with Al-Arabiya, prominent US Senator Lindsey Graham recently stated that any
deal between Saudi Arabia and President Bashar al-Assad’s government would
“jeopardize the American presence in northeastern Syria” and would be “met with
resistance.”
The leaked document
indicates that Turkiye provided input into the planning, stating that Turkish
officials “sought to avoid potential blowback” and suggested that Ukraine
launch its attacks from Kurdish areas in the northeast, instead of from areas
controlled by Turkish-backed militias in the north and northwest including the
Syrian National Army (SNA) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Al-Qaeda
affiliated Nusra Front).
Turkiye views
the SDF as an enemy and considers its core military element, the People’s
Protection Units (YPG) as a terrorist organization due to its links to the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency against the
Turkish government intermittently for decades.
Aron Lund said
that Ukraine’s plans represented a “high-risk project for the SDF,” which needs
to maintain a good working relationship with Russia. “For the SDF to agree to
something like this – it seems like a real gamble,” Lund added.
The Washington
Post notes as well that “The Syrian battlefield ‘provides deniability options’
to Ukraine, the document states, because it could attack Russian positions
previously struck by Syrian rebels, launch attacks from rebel or even
regime-held areas, and attribute attacks to ‘front, defunct or active nonstate
groups.’”
ISIS is one of
the nonstate groups still active in Syria and has carried out numerous attacks
against Syrian civilians and security forces in the east of the country in
recent months.
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