Update: War, Terror, MI6 Role

It’s Holy Week and we have a lot going on, so posting may be necessarily somewhat sketchy. For now, I’ve come up with some interesting speculation—I have to say that because I can’t claim much knowledge about these matters—with regard to MI6’s role in the terror attack at Crocus. But first …

Remember when a “frozen conflict” was supposedly a serious option? We knew it wasn’t, and now the admissions are coming from higher up. Of course they have to pretend that a loss of nerve is to blame, that victory over Russia could have happened:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

The unfavorable situation on the battlefield for Kiev is forcing the West to prepare for the "catastrophic defeat" of Ukrainian forces, which lack weapons and ammunition, writes Ian Martin, a columnist for the British newspaper The Times.

6:26 AM · Mar 28, 2024

Putin is a serious guy. He gets what’s up in the West:

No ‘unfriendly nations’ for Russia, only ‘unfriendly elites’ – Putin

Unlike the West, Moscow will never “cancel” any foreign culture

Russia has no intention of canceling any country’s culture, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday during a working trip to Tver Region. Moscow understands the difference between the people and the elites, and respects every nation’s culture, and also considers its own to be part of the world’s heritage, he explained.

The president was talking to regional artists when the issue of attempts to “cancel” Russian culture by some Western nations was raised. According to Putin, Moscow has no plans to respond in kind.

“We do not have any unfriendly nations, we have unfriendly elites in those nations,” the president said, adding that the Russian government “has never tried to cancel” any foreign artists or cultural performances. “On the contrary, we believe Russian culture to be a part of the global culture and we take pride [in this].”

…

Now, the main items. First, via a usually reliable war reporter, an FSB source suggests that MI6 was a prime mover behind the terror attack at Crocus. That’s a priori plausible, given the over the top role that Britain has played throughout the entire war on Russia. In this first tweet I draw attention to the argument that this attack was a major operatin that required a lot of coordination. I think that’s beyond dispute. That fact, therefore, raises the question that Putin has posed—who was the customer, who benefited:

Victor vicktop55 @vicktop55

FSB reserve colonel Andrei Prispeshkin talks about the oddities of the perpetrators of the terrorist attack at Crocus and who was the customer:

Based on international and personal experience, I will say that a large team worked, at least 20-25 people. In the news we can only see performers. And there are many more people who took part in this monstrous event. Some carried out reconnaissance of the area, others studied the technical documentation of the Crocus, others equipped them with weapons, etc.

 In my opinion, the preparation for this terrorist attack was thorough and took place in advance. Everything could not catch fire instantly from one grenade or Molotov cocktail. Surely additional flammable materials were placed in some rooms, and arson occurred in different parts of the building. It does not happen that such a man-made impact comes from something small. Everything was carefully prepared. Those who committed a monstrous crime are cogs in the machine who carried out their task assigned to them.

 They [the four perps] definitely had some kind of preparation before this. Perhaps they have already participated in some kind of hostilities. Maybe in Ukraine, Central Asia, Palestine. From scratch, not fired upon, he cannot behave so calmly, even while under the influence of some psychotropic drugs.

 It seems to me that the task was set: as many victims as possible and as terrible a terrorist attack as possible. For the whole world to shake. The fire was set so that the visitors, choking in the smoke, would panic and scream in horror. On the one hand, it does not matter how a person died - from a bullet or from smoke. The more terrible the footage, the greater the effect.

This next is an important point. The “detainees” apparently never claimed to be ISIS of any sort—that came from the West, initially.

 The affiliation of the detainees with ISIS was not stated anywhere - neither from our investigators, nor from themselves. From what I have encountered with members of this terrorist organization, I can judge: if they do something and get caught, the first thing they do is admit their involvement. In addition, ISIS most often acts differently - suicide belts, explosions, hostage-taking. Here the tactics are completely different.

Here the source suggests a larger, longer term plan behind the terror attack—to foment division within Russian society.

 I think that the terrorist attack was developed, sponsored, carried out by one of the Western intelligence services. There have always been two most powerful intelligence services in the whole world - English and Russian. The talk that the CIA is now supposedly in first place is not true. MI6 has always been concerned with Central Asia, the southeast, that is, the Arab world. Now the task is to shake up, split society, pit Orthodox Christians against Muslims, Russians against Tajiks, etc. https://t.me/vicktop55/23087

1:13 AM · Mar 25, 2024

Obviously some of this is necessarily circumstantial and speculative. We also know that Ukraine has long had contacts with Western supporter terrorists. How this all sorts out is what the investigators are looking at, but there can be little doubt that Western involvement at the level of training, funding, inspiration is likely. Even if those Western intel agencies may have got cold feet at some point. Their long involvement in infrastructure strikes and the overall training and reorganization of the Ukrainian special services makes this a high probability.

Next we have a long and somewhat similar piece that appeared in translated form in a comment at MoA. The second part I got via Simplicius. The focus here is on the MI6 - Central Asia connection—the continuation of the so-called Great Game. Again, it’s necessarily circumstantial and speculative, but also highly suggestive:

Russian war correspondent Marat Khayrullin on the British trace in the Crocus City Hall attack, Part 1:

Terrorist attack in Moscow: Tajik trace leads to the British
London took out old skeletons from the closet

The monstrous tragedy at Crocus City Hall has very deep roots and far-reaching consequences. We will return to them many times in the future. But today let's talk about where the attack came from this time. And let’s try to at least approximately trace its genesis and understand the fact that the main enemy is throwing against us if not its last forces, then certainly playing the trump cards that it’s been holding until the end.

Two days after the bloody attack, there is a general opinion in the Russian political and intelligence community that the UK, or rather MI6, is behind the terrorist attack. The modus operandi is just too similar to this organization.

An indisputable fact is that all the largest terrorist attacks in Russia in the post-Soviet period, from Beslan to Dubrovka, had a British trace in one way or another. The terrorist leaders who directed the militants were recruited by MI6. And in some cases (like Basayev and Khattab) they were openly collaborating with MI6.

To counteract this opinion, the UK in its top media threw out an obviously prepared statement: a certain organization Vilayat Khorasan (a branch of the Islamic State operating in Afghanistan) is behind the terrorist attack.

For specialists, such action clearly speaks in favor of the version that in this particular case it is the Englishwoman [the UK — S] who is muddying the waters. Here we must immediately say that the story is not simple, and understanding it from scratch is very difficult, so today we will outline only some of the features.

ISIS, in its heyday, was a collection of tribal gangs united primarily on the basis of funding from the UK. Both the bandit al-Shishani (Batirashvili, a native of Georgia) and his replacement, Khalimov, a Tajik, were direct mercenaries of MI6.

The scope of ISIS's activities as a proxy for the British eventually became so serious that it began to interfere with the U.S. influence in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the UK had to partially curtail the scale of its operations so as not to anger the hegemon. And for a while, all these terrorists in the service of MI6 went into the shadows, some were even declared dead.

This next point about ISIS-K was one that was raised the other day by Danny Davis, although he seemed somewhat naive about the implications behind the fact that ISIS-K (Tajik) was hostile towards the Taliban (Pashto).

They began to resurface again since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That’s when that very ISIS from Khorasan appeared on the scene. In reality, a number of Pashtun tribal leaders supported by the British. They are the only ones who agreed to fight the Taliban. This is a key point.

Here we enter the complex geopolitics of Central Asia. Most countries in the region support the Taliban's efforts to pacify Afghanistan, hoping to thereby ensure their security. All, except Tajikistan. Which cannot find a common agreement with the Taliban due to the fact that under their wing there are a number of organizations that are considered terrorist in Tajikistan. It was precisely this split that the UK played on all these years after the Americans left the region, trying with all their might to prevent the establishment of peace in Asia.

To this end, immediately after the U.S. withdrawal, ethnic Tajik Afghans started to be recruited into the Vilayat Khorasan gangs. That is, they began to demonstrate to President Rahmon, who is very sensitive to this issue and considers the Tajiks to be one of the biggest divided nations in the world, that ISIS of Khorasan is sort of friendly [to Tajiks — S]. And that by joining the support of the Taliban he would betray the interests of the Tajiks.

In other words, by pointing a finger at ISIS of Khorasan, which, I emphasize, at the moment practically does not exist as an organization (there is only a certain community of tribal gangs), the UK is openly trying to drag us into Asian kerfuffle. It’s another attempt by the British after Kazakhstan to impose problems in our rear.

But that’s only one part of the game. The second one is no less interesting and more revelatory.

The political base of that very ISIS leader, Khalimov, a Tajik, has always been the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. It has been declared a terrorist organization in its homeland, and since the early 2000s, guess where its headquarters are located? You guessed right—in London.

On the eve of the Americans running away from Afghanistan, the British fussed over the Tajiks and in 2018 created the National Alliance of Tajikistan in Warsaw on the basis of this party, where they tried to cram the remnants of all Tajik thugs who survived after the defeat of ISIS. The alliance was headed by such a figure Kabirov, who walked beside with Khalimov all his life. The point of creating a new organization was simple: The West was losing the war in Syria, and it was necessary to establish the traffic of militants from Tajikistan.

NAT served as a single window where Britain contributed money, and Kabirov and Halimov were engaged in the export of Tajik "meat". It must be said here that Khalimov has been nominally considered dead since 2017, but there is also a second opinion that he was simply "removed" into the shadows after the Americans turned on ISIS. However, what does all this have to do with the events at Crocus City Hall? Patience, dear readers. We're almost to the point.

In 2022, with the beginning of the SMO, the so-called Jabhat Al-Shamiya brigade appeared as part of the mercenary corps in Ukraine. Or rather, one of her detachments operating in the Aleppo area. This detachment is led by a field commander (Tajik by nationality), Khalimov's right-hand man. All that is known about him is that his nickname is Shusha, and he is a history teacher by education. There is a version that this is one of the many relatives and cousins of Khalimov. I will not talk about the combat path of these Tajik Basmachi in Ukraine now, there is also something to talk about there.

Jabhat Al-Shamiya was one of the main recipients of British money allocated through the National Alliance of Tajikistan. And here (attention!) a month after the failure of the AFU counteroffensive (perhaps a little later at the turn of October and November), Ilya Ponomarev, the political leader of the new "Vlasovites"(Russian Volunteer Corps), and the political leader of the Tajik terrorists Kabirov met in London. After that, a number of other meetings were recorded in Warsaw. Already at the level of functionaries. There are some interesting details of these meetings, in particular, who supervised them. But more on that next time.

And now we see a coordinated attack in Belgorod by new "Vlasovites"(Russian Volunteer Corps), and in Moscow by Tajik militants. I think the affiliation of the arrested terrorists to the National Alliance of Tajikistan will be confirmed one way or another soon. Why go to NAT? It is known for certain that recruitment (on the terms of payment for roads and lifting) in Russia is carried out by the National Union of Migrants of Tajikistan, a member of the alliance, which is also considered an extremist organization at home and in Russia. This very Alliance ensures the existence of a network of sleeper agents from Tajikistan in Russia. Agents are primarily in the hands of Mi6, because needless to say, this Alliance was created in the 2000s under the direct leadership of the British. In other words, the UK began to put together a united terrorist front against Russia as soon as it became clear that the counteroffensive had failed, and Ukraine was doomed. And, moreover, in its traditional manner, the UK tried to frame or incarcerate the hegemon.

Obviously, the hegemon did not like this, and he tried to warn Moscow. At the same time, trying not to give up your closest ally. Although, to be honest, even from this story it is clear that with such allies, the United States does not need any enemies. But that's not all. There is also an opinion in our political and intelligence community, which is not widely spoken about, but it is there: the British showed blatant amateur activity, and now everyone is frozen in anticipation of a showdown between the allies. And Russia's first serious reaction to the terrorist attack has already followed (although perhaps this is a coincidence): Our representative at the UN, Nebenzia, said that Russia would not recognize Zelensky as legitimate after the expiration of his term of office. And since you are nobody in our eyes, it is possible that immediately after that day, Hitler Zelensky will be demonstratively denationalized. Unless, of course, he is taken out by his british friends before that. In anticipation of this glorious event, let's hope that Budanov (a direct Mi6 agent) and Ponomarev (an even more direct agent) will soon go to the judgment of God. It's time, it's time, the devil is clearly waiting for them in hell.

Make of it what you will. Obviously Russia has an interest in sowing dissension within NATO. At the same time much of this seems plausible, even if it remains in the shadows.