Ukraine presents report at NATO Parliamentary Assembly on Kremlin’s ties to Taliban and ISIS
The Ukrainian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (PA) presented a report on the Kremlin’s ties to Islamist terrorist groups. The authors of the report devoted special attention to the support provided by Russia to the Islamic State, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reported Iryna Friz, MP from the Petro Poroshenco Bloc and head of the Ukrainian delegation.
“The Taliban is the topic of a separate Parliamentary Assembly report which will be brought up for discussion this session,” the politician wrote on her Facebook page on Sunday, November 18.
The report cites evidence that Russia is providing the Taliban with weapons, and that Russian intelligence agents recruit radical Islamists in Russia and send them to fight for ISIS, organizing their transport to Syria.
The MP notes that the core of ISIS’s leadership is comprised of former members of the Ba’ath Party, which ruled in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime, as well as former officers of the Iraqi army who received training from the Soviet Union KGB.
“In the report there are many interesting facts, evidence and proof of such collaboration… As early as the 1980s, when Yuri Andropov was head of the KGB, they introduced the idea of using Islamic terrorism against the countries of western civilization,” Friz added, noting that this report is the sixth report presented by the Ukrainian delegation to the NATO PA.
According to her, the heads of the delegations from the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany and Spain all said that the reports provided by Ukraine are very important for understanding Russia’s aggressive actions.