lol
of COURSE they did it!
This was a textbook Muslim attack. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a paid Putin propagandist or seriously mentally deficient.
getting captured is so un ISIS like they go in with suicide vests and well, the US seems down right friendly towards captured terrorists when compared to Russia. Common sense
We played with radical Islamist types for years when it benefited us through most of the Cold War.
The fact that it’s a “Muslim attack” does not mean we or Ukraine didn’t light this fire.
Nations are often behind Islamist based terror groups as enablers to varying degrees, using them as proxies in a game of, “the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”: allowing the money to flow, providing safe haven for training, logistics, providing intel, weapons, refuge to flee to...
(Good macro level history write up) https://www.salon.com/2015/10/18/america_enabled_radical_islam_how_the_cia_george_w_bush_and_many_others_helped_create_isis/
(common knowledge and far from complete / comprehensive): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponsored_terrorism
(how we indirectly created ISIS): https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2015/11/spread-wahhabism-and-west-s-responsibility-world
(Our love affair with Saudi Arabia): https://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10719728/us-saudi-arabia-allies This is also why long term Israel is screwed. For us, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan are economically more important and frankly starting in the 70s we more and more built our entire Middle East strategy around Saudi Arabia. Israel may be right in all their arguments, but we will abandon them.
***Are you denying nations and intel services (including us) do not use these groups and ideologies at times in a bigger chess game for their own purpose? That’s pretty much documented fact.***
***While I do not claim that we were behind Moscow or even involved on the Periphery (unproven / speculation), the idea that we and others (Ukraine) do not play games with radical groups should not be hand-waved off. It’s (((possible))).***
Since Russia took 4 of them alive, now going through all the information post mortem, Russia should be able to piece things together fairly quickly and accurately: 4 subjects, video surveillance, money trail, digital communications, weapons and artifact, contact lists on phones and computers, serial numbers on weapons, WAC codes on phones... There is going to be information which at a minimum leads to more and useful information. This is important to the Russians, so they are going to run down all the leads.
99% of law enforcement is minimal effort, because the ends do not justify the means. Are you really going to start a major investigation which costs >$100,000 on some petty crime? When all the mechanisms and tools are brought into an investigation, it is truly awe inspiring.
What’s important now, if Russia wants the “truth,” is that they do not create the answer they seek, like we did with Iraq 2003 and WMD (bad intel work - assuming it wasn’t intentional). After the fact, there is a lot of evidence and it can be pieced together in different ways, leading to different conclusions. Not everything is trustworthy information. Not all information carries the same weight. Societies bias and the political pressures often create a scenario where law enforcement or intel agencies sort of validate a forgone conclusion rather than letting the evidence truly dictate what the outcome of the investigation / analytical product is.
Bottom line: You can’t hand-wave Ukrainian or even our involvement off. It’s possible, even if we do not want to believe that. Time will tell and if the Russians find anything, they will surely blast it out to the public on the biggest loudspeaker they can find.