Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Safety Service, claimed late in Could that the West is attempting to make use of ex-fighters of the ISIL (ISIS) armed group in opposition to Iran.
“Western intelligence companies don’t surrender on their makes an attempt to utilise militant terrorists from Syria as proxy forces within the struggle in opposition to Iran,” Aleksandr Bortnikov informed a gathering of intelligence officers from eight ex-Soviet nations on Could 26, based on the state-run RIA Novosti information company.
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In February, the USA began transporting thousands of imprisoned fighters linked to ISIL from detention centres in northeastern Syria to Iraq. The transfer adopted the choice of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to hitch the anti-ISIL coalition and regain management of northeastern areas managed by Kurdish-dominated forces that had detained as much as 9,000 ISIL fighters, based on the US navy.
Bortnikov didn’t specify which Western nation’s intelligence service is allegedly attempting to “utilise” them and didn’t current any proof, akin to intercepted conversations or photographs.
So has Russia’s intelligence tsar and President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally revealed a clandestine Western operation in opposition to Iran, or was his announcement an try and affect Moscow’s former vassals?
Bortnikov’s company, higher identified by its Russian acronym, FSB, is the primary successor to the Soviet KGB, the place he served with Putin within the Eighties.
The FSB has a historical past of misinforming Putin, particularly about developments in Ukraine, based on the White Home, a number of leaks and media studies.
Gennady Gudkov, an ex-KGB officer and lawmaker-turned Putin critic, mentioned Bortnikov’s claims mirror a scarcity of oversight over safety businesses in at this time’s Russia.
“These are simply phrases, with none proof, not even an try and again them with particulars or details,” mentioned Gudkov, who served within the KGB within the Eighties and was stripped of his lawmaker’s standing in 2012 after taking part in protest rallies and lambasting authorities corruption.
He informed Al Jazeera that when he was a part of parliamentary commissions on safety within the 2000s, lawmakers, prosecutors and courts might exert at the least theoretical management over what safety businesses mentioned and did.
“When all management over them was gone, they understood they might lie about something in any respect, and nobody might test them,” mentioned Gudkov, who fled Russia in 2019 and is needed there as a “terrorist and extremist”.
In his feedback about ISIL, Bortnikov reiterated the FSB’s earlier claims that Western intelligence “created” the armed group and “educated” its fighters.
“ISIL’s historical past started again within the day in related Iraqi jail compounds that have been overseen by particular companies of the [US-led] Western coalition” preventing in Iraq, Bortnikov reportedly mentioned.
“That’s when our nations reported a major progress within the variety of adherents of the jihadist ideology,” he reportedly mentioned.
Bortnikov’s declare ‘a bit far-fetched’
Hundreds of residents of Russia’s mostly-Muslim area of the North Caucasus joined ISIL greater than a decade in the past, usually taking their households with them and sometimes rising by way of the ranks.
Russian intelligence let thousands of alleged “radicals” from the North Caucasus flee to ISIL-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq and recruited brokers or informers amongst them, usually by blackmailing their kinfolk at house, observers say.
A few of these jailed brokers have been transferred to Iraq and have contacted their superiors in Russia, based on Nikolay Mitrokhin, an skilled with Germany’s Bremen College.
Bortnikov’s analysts interpreted their messages, including “a political building about what they don’t essentially share however containing what Putin desires to listen to”, Mitrokhin informed Al Jazeera.
“Statements by Russian particular companies are at all times enigmatic and primarily based on unknown premises, however deciphering them is straightforward,” he mentioned.
Bortnikov’s declare “is a bit far-fetched”, Ruslan Suleymanov, an affiliate fellow on the New Eurasian Methods Centre, a US-British suppose tank, informed Al Jazeera. “Thus far, this info is generally rumours.”
He mentioned, nevertheless, that some former members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a bunch as soon as led by President al-Sharaa and its allies, left Syria for jap and southeastern Afghanistan, the place the ISIL affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP) retains working.
These areas border Pakistan.
“There, they really feel far more comfy than in Syria, the place the brand new authorities personified by Ahmed al-Sharaa totally distanced themselves from the Islamic State, joined the anti-ISIL coalition headed by Washington,” Suleymanov mentioned.
Bortnikov’s details about contacts between Western intelligence and former ISIL fighters “appears reasonably attainable,” based on Nikita Smagin, an skilled on Russia-Iran ties.
“However constructing ties doesn’t imply that in the long run, these forces would march in opposition to Iran,” he informed Al Jazeera.
Bortnikov’s allegations is also the Kremlin’s try to revive its waning clout in former Soviet republics.
“The rhetoric of fright, of displaying that the US is extra harmful as a result of they do that or that, and we can assist you – this rhetoric works with this logic,” Smagin mentioned.
When addressing ex-Soviet safety officers, Bortnikov purported that the alleged Western efforts to “utilise” ISIL create a safety menace to the ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus that border Iran or its neighbours, and whose intelligence officers have been on the assembly.
Azerbaijan and Armenia border Iran and used to be its provinces.
Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan share historic ties with Iran.
Hundreds of individuals from Central Asia joined ISIL.
Bortnikov claims that if “recruited” by Western intelligence, these individuals might grow to be conduits of “undermining” affect.
“The West is attempting to dam integration processes, undermine [ex-Soviet] nations from inside, power their peoples to overlook their widespread historical past and pit them in opposition to one another [in order] to put in its rule right here,” Bortnikov claimed.
One other observer mentioned Bortnikov’s phrases “aren’t price being taken actually”.
They sound “extra like a component of information-political rhetoric than the reflection of an actual image”, Emil Mustafayev, chief editor of the Minval Politika journal primarily based in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, informed Al Jazeera.
Putin, Bortnikov’s boss, who has cultivated ties with Tehran for many years and backed it in opposition to Western sanctions, has not repeated the claims.
No ex-Soviet safety officers who attended the summit backed him publicly.
Furthermore, the protection of Bortnikov’s speech in Russia was restricted to a number of studies in Kremlin-controlled media, and no pro-Kremlin political pundit expounded on it in op-eds or on tv.
In October 2025, Bortnikov used an identical assembly of ex-Soviet intelligence chiefs in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand to accuse British intelligence of allegedly thwarting peace talks on Ukraine, organising assaults in ex-Soviet republics and making an attempt to explode a Russian pure fuel pipeline to Turkiye.
The UK dismissed these allegations as “utter nonsense”.
