Will Russia recruit Syrian Kurds to fight in Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict?
While Russia will likely avoid direct involvement in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, there are signs it could draw lessons from Libya and recruit fighters from Syria to do its bidding.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service recently issued a statement saying that the escalating armed confrontation in Nagorno-Karabakh, "like a magnet, attracts militants from various kinds of international terrorist structures."
The intelligence service said that according to the information available to it, "Mercenaries from international terrorist organizations fighting in the Middle East — in particular Jabhat al-Nusra, Firqat Hamza, the Sultan Murad Division, as well as extremist Kurdish groups — are actively entering into the conflict zone. Moreover, we are talking about hundreds and even thousands of radicals hoping to make money on the new Karabakh war.”
The Oct. 6 statement, however, does contains some factual inaccuracies. For example, one of the groups named, Jabhat al-Nusra, has not existed since early 2017, when it merged with other groups to become Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Also, while the statement included Firqat Hamza and the Sultan Murad Division as being among the "international terrorist organizations" operating in Nagorno-Karabakh, these groups are neither on UN international sanctions lists nor are they recognized as terrorist organizations under Russian law. Likewise, the names of these groups do not appear on the corresponding federal list of organizations banned in Russia. While the presence of fighters from Firqat Hamza and the Sultan Murad Division in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is supported by various forms of evidence, there is no convincing evidence of the presence of militants from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist organization in Azerbaijan.
On the other hand, such a strong statement regarding the forces that Turkey is allegedly using to support Azerbaijan was “balanced” by the intelligence service's mention of the presence of “Kurdish extremists” in the conflict zone. In this case, the statement was referring to groups that support Armenia. The names were not directly stated, likely in order not to jeopardize relations between Moscow and the Syrian Kurds.
