Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 12-16-Russia-Ukraine

Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 12-16-Russia-Ukraine

By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence

Spreading, are we ready or??

While relations between East and West is reaching a – dangerous - boiling point, and sable retiling is seen and eared be it the over Ukraine, downing of MH17, a claimed threat to the Baltic and Moldova, western or eastern expansion etc. Different views on the growing problem, disputes on how to deal with Daesh in the Middle East, Africa and lately threatening Europe; The Other Enemy” lays in waiting and could very well benefit from it. AQSL plan foretells a “Total confrontation to come soon;” In their plan it is between them – the Muslim army - and the “Roman Empire” western Crusader forces, but for them to be it first between East and West will do fine. Moreover with the rising tension and distracted view from both east and west the AQSL can look, study, plan and decide on their options, with or without Daesh... Cees.

Intelligence sharing between Russia and the United States regarding the Islamic State (IS) group is “quite possible,” “Current events are of such a serious nature that we need to unite,” ---- the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov.

There is a high probability that he – Putin, will intervene in the Baltic’s to test NATO’s Article 5,” --- Former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Military cuts would encourage ‘forces of oppression’ – “It would send, not least under current circumstances, a very, very bad signal to Russia, to terrorists, to others – an indication of what I would call retrenchment and retreat.” “It is quite the opposite [of what] we need right now. We need free societies, the liberal democracies, to step up to the plate and demonstrate a clear economic commitment to defense and security.”

-- ex-NATO chiefs, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer

It’s imperative that Russia, the U.S. and the European Union rebuild ties and work together to neutralize the Islamic State ---Rogachev of the Foreign Ministry said

"We are today seeing Russian conventional forces employed, albeit subject to continued brazen denials by the Kremlin, in eastern Ukraine to assist separatists to seize territory,"

---Sir Adrian is known as DSACEUR - Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO forces.

Russia 'danger' to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - Fallon There is a "real and present danger" of Russia trying to destabilise the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia

--- the UK defence secretary says. Michael Fallon

“That was a very serious signal that we should stop quarreling and join efforts,”

--- Anatoly Kulikov, a former interior minister

Some of us have warned for years about the increasing size of the Russian military budget and the capabilities it was intended to provide. The threat of Putin to the stability of Europe's borders is a very real one. From the Baltic to the Balkans to the South Caucuses, Russia is

developing specific vantage points from which it can destabilise NATO. None of this is an accident, but part of a well thought out and, so far successfully executed, strategy. NATO needs to watch its back door first.

--- Liam Fox is a former UK secretary of state for defencePutin is facing the threat of resurgent radical Islam on Russia’s southern flank at a time when his security forces are focused on Ukraine and the economy is reeling from sanctions and plunging oil revenue. Russia is the Islamic State’s new target,”

--- Caucasian chief Grigory Shvedov said, “The process has begun.”

They will also try to “activate the combat component” in the North Caucasus in the coming months, --- Evgeny Ilyin, first deputy head of staff at the Anti-Terror Committee

Some of us have warned for years about the increasing size of the Russian military budget and the capabilities it was intended to provide It is unsurprising that events in Syria and Iraq have dominated western foreign policy interest and activity in recent months 1. The civil war, coupled with the failure and incompetence of the Nouri al-Maliki government in Iraq, which led to increased resentment and tensions in the region, are a tragedy of international proportions. In our media, we are repeatedly exposed to the latest barbaric and medieval atrocities of ISIL, leading to justifiable public and political outrage. This is, of course, exactly what their communication strategy was intended to achieve. Yet, while all of this has been occurring, another international threat has increasingly loomed on the horizon, one which is much more potentially dangerous for those members of NATO. The Russian annexation of Crimea, by force, has brought the prospect of military confrontation in continental Europe closer than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The continued involvement of Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine adds to growing tension in the region and should act as a wake-up call to even the most craven of Russian President Vladimir Putin's apologists in the West.

Cold War doctrines The first of these is that Putin still clings to Cold War doctrines which puts him on a collision course with the free world. In particular, the insistence on the concept of a "near abroad", in other words, a veto on the foreign and security policies of its immediate geographic neighbours, is a remnant of a bygone era. Or, at least, it should be. Many of the former Soviet satellite states, such as Poland or those in the Baltic, gravitated towards the West precisely because they believed that sovereign nations should be able to exercise self-determination. It is this concept which Russia rejects and is his excuse for his actions in Ukraine. Ukraine considered a closer political and economic relationship with the EU, something Putin objected to and so he simply took control of Crimea, part of Ukrainian sovereign territory.

By the same token, the apparent belief in the Kremlin that ethnic Russians, wherever they live, are to be protected, not by the laws or constitutions of the countries in which they live, but by an external force i.e. Russia, is utterly incompatible with our concept of international law. It is this fundamental difference in outlook, which makes, and will continue to make, normalisation in relations with Russia so difficult. This political outlook is now augmented with a much greater military capability than we have seen for many years. Ever since the invasion of Georgia showed the shortcomings of Russian military capability, the Kremlin has been engaged in a programme of upgrading and retraining. Oil revenues have been translated into high-end electronic warfare and UAVs in particular. While NATO forces undertake

1 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/02/nato-watch-door-150220061245171.html

traditional training exercises, Russia has used the Ukrainian conflict to test new weapon systems on the ground.

Greater military capability The Russian backed separatists have a range of new defence capabilities, including the Buk system, which brought down Malaysia airlines flight MH 17, and the Strela system which is used for lower altitudes and shorter ranges. Of course, Russia denies providing these capabilities, despite the fact that NATO, as well as independent experts, have seen direct evidence of Russian military involvement. All this, coupled with Russia's programme of exercises and manoeuvres, involving tens of thousands of personnel, should send a clear signal to the West. Some of us have warned for years about the increasing size of the Russian military budget and the capabilities it was intended to provide. It would be wrong to pretend that this is simply about sovereignty and the well-being of the Ukrainian people themselves. Important though this undoubtedly is, the response to the Ukrainian crisis is largely about the international credibility of the West, and NATO in particular. Russia is not the only country who will be watching our response. China, with its increasingly aggressive posture in the South China Sea will be looking to see if there are any red lines that the United States is genuinely committed to and our allies, especially in the Gulf, will be looking to see whether lessons have been learned from the Syrian chemical weapons debacle. The threat of Putin to the stability of Europe's borders is a very real one. From the Baltic to the Balkans to the South Caucuses, Russia is developing specific vantage points from which it can destabilise NATO. None of this is an accident, but part of a well thought out and, so far successfully executed, strategy. NATO needs to watch its back door first. Liam Fox is a former UK secretary of state for defence and member of parliament for North Somerset.

13 Feb, Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said his radical movement rejects the Minsk peace deal and that their paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting" according to their "own plans." Thus if the army receives orders to cease military activity and withdraw heavy weaponry from the eastern regions, the Right Sector paramilitaries, who are also fighting there “reserve the right” to continue the war, he said.

14 Feb, The eastern Ukrainian militias have stopped all military action in accordance with the Minsk peace deal. They will suppress any provocations that may be organized by Kiev forces, said Aleksandr Zakharchenko, head of Donetsk People’s Republic. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered troops to cease fire at Sunday midnight local time (22:00 GMT) in line with the Thursday Minsk agreement. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook page that “all National Guard and Interior Ministry units will halt fire at midnight.” Meanwhile, Defense Ministry spokesman of Donetsk People’s Republic, Eduard Basurin, has ordered that all eastern Ukrainian militia units halt fighting “on the entire line of contact,” RIA Novosti reports. A similar statement has come out of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic, saying that local militia are to stop all combat actions at midnight.

14 Feb, krainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered Ukrainian military forces to halt fire in the east of the country in line with a fresh cease-fire agreement. He made the announcement from the Defense Ministry, just minutes before the truce was officially due to go into effect. Poroshenko said the "world was holding its breath," hoping the cease-fire would hold

14 Feb, former US congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul “Get the foreigners out of there [Ukraine], get the Europeans out, the US out, get NATO out, and get the Russians out,” Paul said at the International Students for Liberty Conference in Washington on Friday.

“There will be less of a civil war going on there because they will have to worry about their debt. This is an economic matter too. You have to realize that the country is totally bankrupt.” “I’m not pro-Putin, I’m not pro-Russia, but I’m pro-facts,” Paul stressed when defending his stance. “Crimea is not exactly a foreign country, according to the Russians. But I’m neutral on that,” the former presidential candidate stated. Paul – a 79-year-old retired doctor who spent nearly three decades in the US Congress representing the state of Texas – reiterated his previous statements, noting that what happened in Ukraine last year was a “coup” that was planned by “NATO, EU” and western Ukrainians. “One thing for sure that we do know, is we [US] had the conversations between our State Department and our ambassador before the coup – who will we put in place. And they planned part of the coup.” When the uprising in Kiev in early 2014 led to the ousting of then-President Viktor Yanukovych, Paul urged in an op-ed that the US must “keep [its] hands off Ukraine and let them solve their own problems.” Russian President Vladimir Putin recently criticized NATO's involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, claiming the Ukrainian army is essentially a “NATO legion” which fails to “pursue the national interests of Ukraine” and is interested in restricting Russia. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed the US for pursuing steps that “only promoted further aggravation” of the conflict. “Through every step, as the crisis has developed, our American colleagues and the EU under their influence have tried to escalate the situation,” Lavrov said during a security conference in Munich on Saturday. Russia’s envoy to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, said on Thursday that lethal weapons deliveries to Ukraine – a possibility being considered by Washington – would be unacceptable and would potentially have dangerous and unpredictable consequences.

MENTALLY ILL. Former NATO Secretary General: "Putin could mastermind hybrid attack on the Baltics"8 February 2015, 06:01

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, a Former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned about the unpredictability of the mentally ill Russian tsar.

Nobody knows what may come to that psycho's mind. Rasmussen said that Putin has dangerous ambitions beyond Ukraine. The Kremlin leader aims "to test Western resolve in the Baltic states". Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Kremlin’s true goal is to shatter NATO solidarity and reassert Russian dominance over Eastern Europe. "This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power", he told The Daily Telegraph. "There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5,” he said, referring to the solidarity clause that underpins collective security. "Putin knows that if he crosses the red line and attacks a NATO ally, he will be defeated. Let us be quite clear about that. But he is a specialist in hybrid warfare", Rasmussen said about Russian leader who is having an Asperger's syndrome. Department of Monitoring Kavkaz Center  YALTA 2. After Minsk, Putin will take further steps to invade free countries12 February 2015, 01:31

Moscow political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky told American propaganda Byelorussian Servive of Radio Free Europe that Russia had intensified its military presence in the

Donbass region to demand to meet its requirements during the Norman format summit in Minsk. "Vladimir Putin sells the peace, so that is why he significantly aggravated the war before having talks with the European leaders. He needed to prove that he was the only who could bring peace to Ukraine, but peacekeeping costs a lot", Belkovsky said. The expert noted that Democratist president of Ukraine Poroshenko was ready to hand over a number of positions

and wanted to negotiate with Putin. "But, in fact, it does not mean the end of the war as Ukraine is not the ultimate goal of Putin. Ukraine is only the subject and the territory for talks and a bargaining with the West. Putin's ultimate goal is to become a Stalin and bring the world back to the Yalta-Potsdam format that was stopped in 1989 when the Soviet bloc collapsed. Reconciliation in the Donbass region is possible, Putin's set of requirements is clear: the autonomy of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and guarantees from the Ukraine's side to provide life-support of the Crimea, after all, Putin is not able to occupy the corridor between the Russian-Ukrainian border and the Crimea. But the conflict will not outrun itself. Putin feels like a winner, and he will take further steps. On the one hand, the West understands it, but on the other hand, there is a great fear of war with Russia. Therefore, the West will do everything possible to avoid the war, even by price of great concessions to Russia", Stanislav Belkovsky said. Department of MonitoringKavkaz Center

21 Feb, BBC, the UK defence secretary says. Michael Fallon Russia 'danger' to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - Fallon There is a "real and present danger" of Russia trying to destabilise the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Michael Fallon said he was worried about "pressure" from Russian President Vladimir Putin on the ex-Soviet states, which are Nato members. Russia might use tactics there similar to those it used in Ukraine, he said. Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander told the BBC he too had "very real concerns" about the situation. Mr Fallon's comments came after PM David Cameron called on Europe to tell Russia it faced economic and financial consequences for "many years to come" if it did not stop destabilising Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence has said RAF jets were scrambled on Wednesday after two Russian military aircraft were seen off the Cornwall coast. 'Getting ready' Speaking to journalists from the Times and Daily Telegraph during a flight to Sierra Leone, where British troops are helping tackle the Ebola outbreak, Mr Fallon said: "I'm worried about Putin. "I'm worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing Nato." He said Nato must be prepared for aggression from Russia "in whatever form it takes" - because Russia was likely to use covert tactics such as those he said it had used to annex Crimea and during the current Ukraine conflict.

SkyNews 21 Feb , General Sir Adrian Bradshaw says the threat from Russia "represents an existential threat to our whole being". In a speech in London, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw said there is a "danger that Russia might believe that the large scale conventional forces which she has shown she can generate at very short notice as we saw in the snap exercise that preceded the take-over of Crimea could in future be used not only for intimidation and coercion but potentially to seize NATO territory." Such a move, were it to happen, would invoke Article 5 of the organisation's constitution. This states that all NATO nations must come to the aid of other members in an act of collective defence. It would bring the Alliance into direct conflict with Russia. Sir Adrian is known as DSACEUR - Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO forces. "We are today seeing Russian conventional forces employed, albeit subject to continued brazen denials by the Kremlin, in eastern Ukraine to assist separatists to seize territory," he told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Russia has criticized NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and President Vladimir Putin has accused the Ukrainian army, which is fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, of being puppets of NATO with a policy of “containing” Russia. The chief of Russia’s armed forces said on 30 Jan 2015 a strong nuclear arsenal will ensure military superiority over the West as Russia seeks to fulfill a multi-billion dollar plan to modernize its forces by 2020.

Russia, facing a likely recession this year after U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine and a fall in oil prices, must deal with new forms of Western aggression, including economic confrontation, said armed forces chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov 2 “Support for our strategic nuclear forces to ensure their high military capability combined with...growth of the military potential of the general forces will assure that (the United States and NATO) do not gain military superiority over our country,” said Gerasimov.

2014, As things get hotter between Russia and NATO, Putin is waving his nuclear dick around. Russia plans to conduct massive nuclear war maneuvers. Last year it successfully tested its new Bulava ("Mace") submarine launched nuclear missile, hitting its target with complete accuracy with its dummy warheads. The Red Fleet's Commander-in-Chief Admiral Viktor Chirkov said that it blasted off from the White Sea, hitting its objective in the Russian Federation's far east minutes later. The Bulava can travel for 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) to rain nuclear death in the form of six to ten warheads.

Military cuts3 would encourage ‘forces of oppression’ – ex-NATO chiefs. Cuts to government defense spending would strengthen Britain’s enemies, including the Islamic State jihadists and Russian President Vladimir Putin, two former NATO chiefs have warned.

2 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/russia-will-not-allow-other-countries-to-have-military-superiority-over-it-defence-minister-says/article22716252/3 http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/7/military%20spending%20nato%20odonnell/military%20spending%20nato%20odonnell%20pdf

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who left his post as NATO General Secretary in 2014, and his predecessor, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said that a failure to meet NATO members’ 2 percent of GDP military spending target would send a message of retreat to global aggressors. Their warning came a week after it was revealed that US President Barack Obama gave Prime Minister David Cameron a frank warning that cuts to the UK defense budget after the British general election would weaken members of NATO and send a poor message to European allies. Chancellor George Osborne and David Cameron have repeatedly refused to commit to the 2 percent spending target should the Conservatives be reelected. Military chiefs are concerned the UK Armed Forces will bear the brunt of further cuts after the Tories announced they would protect NHS, education and international aid funding. Rasmussen, who chaired the NATO conference in Wales where Cameron urged countries to meet the 2 percent spending target, told the Telegraph that a failure to commit would send a message of “retrenchment” to Russia and terror organizations. “It would send, not least under current circumstances, a very, very bad signal to Russia, to terrorists, to others – an indication of what I would call retrenchment and retreat.” “It is quite the opposite [of what] we need right now. We need free societies, the liberal democracies, to step up to the plate and demonstrate a clear economic commitment to defense and security.” He added that a lack of sufficient military spending would encourage aggression. “It sends a signal to the forces of oppression that the forces of freedom don’t feel committed to invest sufficiently in their own security and that can, of course, only encourage those forces of oppression to continue their aggression against free societies.” His remarks come as the ceasefire agreements in Ukraine appeared to be in danger of collapsing over the weekend. The NATO summit in Wales last September saw European allies promise to recommit to the 2 percent defense spending target, with Cameron claiming the UK would “aim to continue” hitting the mark. De Hoop Scheffer, who served as NATO general secretary before Rasmussen told the Telegraph that cutting defense spending would show that Britain’s international influence is shrinking, and warned against reneging the public commitment to 2 percent spending. “This is Great Britain, one of the most important and influential allies in NATO. That ally reneging on 2 percent would be very serious, very serious indeed,” he said. “British diplomacy is rather absent in the framework. Did you see Angela Merkel and François Hollande trying [to secure peace], going to Moscow, going to Minsk? But I ask myself the question: ‘Where is the British Prime Minister? Why is he not fully involved in this?’” he added. The former chiefs said they had no wish to interfere in UK politics, but expressed hope that Britain would continue to maintain defense spending. Military chiefs have previously said without 2 two percent target being met, the armed forces will be unable to meet their 2020 goals. A Downing Street spokesman said: “Long-term decisions on spending are inevitably for the next spending review but in the meantime we will continue to fulfill all our commitments on defense spending, with over £160 billion of investment in equipment and equipment support planned over the next 10 years.”

(RFE/RL 23 Feb ) — Intelligence sharing between Russia and the United States regarding the Islamic State (IS) group is “quite possible,” the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, has said. “Current events are of such a serious nature that we need to unite,” Bortnikov said, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. Bortnikov made his comments to reporters in Washington, D.C., where he is part of a Russian delegation at the Obama administration’s antiextremism conference in Washington. “The issue of partnership between our service [the FSB], of which I am the head, is very

important for us. In the first stages of active counteroperations we must apply special measures and means to locate terrorist attacks […] knowledge of the situation is very important and, of course, intelligence sharing with our partners in this regard,” Bortnikov told reporters. Bortnikov also told reporters that as many as 1,700 Russian nationals could be fighting alongside the IS group in Iraq. “Right now, there are around 1,700 Russian nationals in Iraq and this number has practically doubled over the past year,” he said. The head of the FSB said that Russia must prevent its citizens from leaving to join militant groups. “We must undertake work to prevent the departure, and on the other hand [we must] do whatever is needed so that after these citizens return to their countries of origin we avoid terrorist attacks,” Bortnikov said.

(Bloomberg 4 17 Feb) -- Hundreds of thousands of Muslims vented their anger in unison, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as their leader condemned supporters of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo after militants murdered five of its cartoonists. The protest against caricatures of Muhammad and the policies of the U.S. and its allies was organized by the state and televised live across the country for more than an hour, but it wasn’t in Iran or Pakistan. It was in Russia, where Vladimir Putin came to power vowing to “wipe out” Muslim extremists, even “in the outhouse.” Fifteen years on, Putin is now seeking to turn Muslim anger to his advantage by pushing for a united front against what he sees as a U.S.-led conspiracy to dominate the world. Putin is also trying to neutralize the threat posed by the return of Russian jihadis currently fighting for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, a task complicated by his growing isolation over the war in Ukraine, officials and analysts in Moscow say. “The protest was an attempt to meld Muslim opinions with Russian-wide views about the Western world, a lever to unite the population around Putin,” said Alexei Malashenko, a Middle East analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

‘Western Agents’ ; The rally last month was held in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, where tens of thousands of people died in Russia’s two wars against separatists. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Putin loyalist who runs the region, told the crowd “Western agents” probably organized the Charlie Hebdo killings to trigger a “new wave” of Islamic State recruits for their war on Islam. Kadyrov, 38, has said the U.S. secretly controls the Islamic State. Chechnya is the only one of the seven regions in the North Caucasus Federal District where the death toll from battles with extremists rose last year, to 52, according to the annual review of violence in the area compiled by the Caucasian Knot, a Moscow-based analysis and news group. Almost 10 million people, mainly Muslims, live in the district, which borders Azerbaijan and Georgia and is closer to Syria than Moscow. An estimated 3,069 people were killed in what Russia calls its fight against terrorists in the North Caucasus in the last five years and another 2,747 were wounded, according to a study published today by the Caucasian Knot. Radicals from Chechnya have claimed credit for some of the most brutal acts of terrorism in Russia. They include the 2002 hostage-taking at the Nord-Ost theater in Moscow, which led to 170 deaths, the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan that resulted in more than 380 fatalities and the dual suicide bombings in Moscow subway stations in 2010 that killed at least 40.

1,500 Fighters Putin is facing the threat of resurgent radical Islam on Russia’s southern flank at a time when his security forces are focused on Ukraine and the economy is reeling from

4 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/putin-points-muslim-rage-at-cold-war-foes-as-jihadis-vow-attacks

sanctions and plunging oil revenue. The ruble has lost almost half its value against the dollar in the last year, adding to the strain. The issue became more urgent after militants staged the deadliest attack in Chechnya in four years in December, when they stormed a police outpost and seized buildings in Grozny, culminating in an hours-long shootout that left more than 20 dead. The operation coincided with Putin’s annual address to the nation’s political elite inside the Kremlin. “These rebels have showed up in Chechnya again,” Putin said in his speech that day. “I’m sure local law-enforcement authorities will take proper care of them.”

Russian officials are bracing for an upsurge in violence across the North Caucasus now that the Islamic State has declared Russia an enemy for arming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who’s been locked in a civil war for four years. About 1,500 Russians, most from the North Caucasus, have fought for the Sunni extremist group and many of them are starting to return, according to the government’s Anti-Terror Committee.

‘New Target’ “Russia is the Islamic State’s new target,” Caucasian Knot chief Grigory Shvedov said. “The process has begun.” The Islamic State, previously known as ISIS or ISIL, declared itself a global caliphate with authority over all Muslims last June, after killing thousands of people en route to conquering vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. and its allies have been bombing its forces since August and President Barack Obama is seeking new authority to widen the campaign. The group, which has tens of thousands of fighters in Syria and Iraq, is establishing militant affiliates in countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Libya, according to U.S. officials. At least three “emirs” in the North Caucasus have pledged allegiance to the movement in the past few months.

‘Warped Psyches’ “It’s the most economically powerful and self-sufficient terrorist entity we’ve ever seen,” Ilya Rogachev, who runs the Russian Foreign Ministry’s office of new challenges and threats, said in an interview. “And now they’re bearing heavy losses, so the outflow of militants is increasing. These people are coming back with warped psyches, ready to solve problems through violence.” The Islamic State’s media arm last month released a video in which a boy appears to execute two men accused of spying for Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. One said in an alleged confession that he was gathering data about fighters from Russia, while the other said he was sent to locate the residence of the group’s leader. In November, Kadyrov said the Islamic State commander known as Omar the Chechen had been killed in Syria after threatening to strike Russia. He didn’t elaborate. The FSB didn’t respond immediately to an e-mailed request for comment on the threat posed by the group. Leonid Reshetnikov, who ran the information and analysis directorate at Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, from 2005 to 2009, said the video looks fake because there’s no blood and the confessions aren’t convincing.

‘Combat Component’ Still, the Islamic State’s message is real: “We will be as merciless with your agents as we are with the Westerners,” Reshetnikov said in an interview. They will also try to “activate the combat component” in the North Caucasus in the coming months, according to Evgeny Ilyin, first deputy head of staff at the Anti-Terror Committee. “The guys who return aren’t yesterday’s

schoolboys, but hardened fighters who know how to use all kinds of weapons necessary for terrorist activities,” Ilyin said in an interview in the Russian capital. President Putin visited Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, for the first time in a decade on Feb. 9 to discuss the Islamic State and other issues with his counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. While the group poses an “unprecedented” threat, the U.S. and its allies should bear responsibility for creating the conditions for its success, Putin told Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.

‘Serious Signal’ Even so, Rogachev of the Foreign Ministry said it’s imperative that Russia, the U.S. and the European Union rebuild ties and work together to neutralize the Islamic State. Russia and the U.S. used to share intelligence on terrorist threats, most recently during preparations for the Sochi Olympics, but those ties have been severed over the war in Ukraine. Now, Russia isn’t always invited to the international meetings the U.S. convenes to discuss the issue, according to Rogachev. Without such cooperation, attacks like the one on Charlie Hebdo will only increase in severity and frequency, according to Anatoly Kulikov, a former interior minister who commanded Russian troops during the first war in Chechnya in the 1990s. Kulikov now heads the Club of Russian Commanders, an advisory body uniting more than 1,000 retired senior military officers.

“That was a very serious signal that we should stop quarreling and join efforts,” Anatoly Kulikov, a former interior minister said in an interview.

Remember: While East and West…They could take advantage; The AQSL – but now also Daesh 5 year - 2020 Plan

This map, circulated widely as outlining an ISIS five-year plan, (Published 2014 + 5 is around 2019/2020: equal to AQSL 2020 Grand-plan) has been largely debunked, but may be indicative of the widest extent of their ambitionshttp://media.vocativ.com/photos/2014/07/BqRsLiSCEAIcJtp1903858211.png