You have posted this same article cite in two threads now, with a very misleading excerpt from what is a very long, involved and detailed article. While it is “technically correct” that certain elements of the Russian FSB seem to have been facilitating a “pipeline” to funnel jihadis out of Russia into Syria, your spin that they’ve done this because Putin actually supports ISIS is not an accurate depiction of the sense of the article.
I won’t go so far as to accuse you of dishonesty - merely that you failed to fully comprehend the article’s point. Others who bother to read the full article will have to make their own judgment. It’s a very good investigative piece, and I recommend they do.
The bottom line is that the Russians’ reasons for doing this appear to have been mainly to divert their Chechen jihadis from committing terrorist activities in Russia, and thus lessen their domestic problems, while simultaneously dumping them on the US and its allies. In other words, a “pressure relief valve” type of policy. Better to bleed us and let us expend our resources fighting them while saving their own.
In fact, as the article states, there is no proof that this policy, while it may be short-sighted and ultimately stupid, with negative blow-back on Russia, actually originated with Putin. Some of the reporter’s sources attribute it to local/regional FSB officials as a way of using the resulting drop in domestic terrorist activity in Russia in their areas as a way of burnishing their own departmental terrorist/crime-fighting statistics and furthering their own careers. Also, as the article points out, this type of “exporting” problems problems has been a long-standing policy meme of Russian governments since Czarist times.
Now that Putin has decided to directly intervene militarily in Syria, we’ll have an opportunity to see if his forces start killing ISIS directly as well. That will be the determinant as to whether Putin actually “supports” ISIS, or has merely been using them as a tool or pawn to weaken the West and advance his global agenda.
The Soviets had a pattern of promoting terrorists all over the world to bleed the US and destabilize governments friendly to us. To say or even imply, however, that Putin supports ISIS, and by extension their Islamist agenda, is not the conclusion of this article.
I won’t go so far as to accuse you of dishonesty - merely that you failed to fully comprehend the article’s point. Others who bother to read the full article will have to make their own judgment.
The part of the article that addresses WHY Russia is sending in fighters to fight on BOTH sides is merely the author's 'interpretation', or 'best guess', why. Fact appears to be they ARE doing it. WHY is still unknown. But if you know anything about KGB/FSB tactics, you would know that this would be something you should not automatically dismiss.
Apparently ISIS is composed of every low life thug every state intelligence agency in the world could round up and steer into the abyss. The ultimate proxy army. Chechens, Turks, Eurotrash and even some sympathetic US jihadis and lefties. Time for them to meet their maker. The only people crying are the intelligence agencies from Europe, the US and the Gulf States. Apparently they thought they could get some productive work out of the thugs.