Russian media has revealed new links between the Ukraine regime and last week’s horrific terrorist attack at a concert venue outside Moscow.
“Investigators have verified information that large amounts of money and cryptocurrency that the perpetrators of the terrorist attack received trace back to Ukraine,” reported the Tass news agency Thursday. “The funds were used in preparing the crime.”
As the increasingly desperate Kiev regime launches attacks on Russian civilians in Belgorod and other regions, speculation has intensified that elements within Ukraine’s military and intelligence service may have played a role in last Friday’s incident. Independent journalist Dan Lazare joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Friday to weigh in on the claim.
“I look forward to the Russian government laying this evidence out – I hope they do,” said Lazare. “To me, the fact that four of the accused were apprehended while making a dash for the Ukrainian border and were caught just a short distance away – I mean, to me that speaks volumes. It's not absolute proof, but it certainly strongly suspects that there were collaborators on the Ukrainian side, and that Ukrainian bodies were helping them with this crime.”
“We can't help but harken back to the assassination of Darya Dugina in 2022. That was the daughter of the Russian political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin,” the author added. “She was killed in a car bomb in Russia. At first the Ukrainian government denied any involvement whatsoever, and the US backed it up. And then a few weeks later the US admitted that the act was done by the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.”
The incident prompted little attention in the West, where Dugin is a highly vilified figure. But a terrorist attack killing almost 150 people is significantly harder to ignore.
“I strongly suspect we'll learn the same thing here,” said Lazare, suggesting Ukrainian officials may have played a role in the “act of brutal terrorism.” “And, if that is true, if my suspicions prove correct, this will be a real game changer.”
“Russia will feel justified in responding… and the US will not be in a position to say no to Russia and will have a very hard time continuing its political support of Kiev,” he claimed.
Americans’ support for arming Ukraine has already declined heavily over the last few years as a majority now say the US has sent too much money to the Zelensky regime. The full revelation of the extremist nature of the government – in which Nazi sympathizers hold important positions of power in police and military institutions – will likely further provoke opposition to continued Western support.
“What about the discussions about how quick the United States was to attribute blame or credit to ISIS-K*?” asked host Wilmer Leon. “And now we find out that this whole ISIS-K, which was supposed to be created in Afghanistan, that the leader of the organization actually has ties – and numerous ties – to the CIA.”
“I'm not very surprised,” responded Lazare. “There really has been a tangled relationship between al-Qaeda and its various offshoots in US intelligence. I'm speaking very carefully here – I'm not trying to engage in any kind of a conspiracy theory – but that clearly is the case.”
“We know that al-Qaeda back in 9/11 had close ties to the top circles of Saudi Arabia,” the journalist continued. “The US chose to look the other way, not to investigate those ties very closely. When al-Qaeda led an assault on Idlib, a province in northern Syria in 2015, they used TOW missiles that were provided by the US via Saudi Arabia.”
“Also a later study found out that most of the equipment, ammunition and weaponry that ISIS was using in Syria had come from the US,” he added. “This doesn't mean that it was intentionally supplied by the US, but it merely means that US supplies somehow wound up in ISIS hands… So there's a tangled relationship, and US assurances that it was not involved and that Ukraine was not involved simply are not fully convincing given the nature of that relationship.”
The United States has historically utilized Islamic extremists to help achieve its geopolitical objectives, perhaps most famously when the country backed Mujahideen rebels against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Elements of the Mujahideen went on to form al-Qaeda, which tragically struck within the United States on September 11, 2001.
More recently the US has backed Islamic extremists in Syria in its effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The country’s destabilization has allowed ISIS to find safe haven, another extremist group that emerged in the aftermath of the United States’ disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“There's been some very strange overlaps in recent years where ISIS or ISIS-K and its positions have been oddly coincident with those of the US,” said Lazare. “It is very hostile to Hamas, for example, it's very hostile to Iran, and it's hostile to Russia.”
“And they've been very hostile to governments in African countries that the United States has issues with,” added Leon.
* ISIS (also known as Daesh/ISIL/IS/ISIS-K/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.
** Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization banned in Russia and other states.