Leaks show Ukraine sought to target Russia in Syria via Kurdish SDF
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Newly leaked documents reveal a rather likely alliance between Ukraine and the Syrian Democratic Forces, which under the patronage of the US made plans, as early as 2018, to attack Russian troops in Syria, while think tanks have written of such a scenario as early as 2014.
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Leaked documents reveal Ukraine had an interest in targeting Russia in Syria proving the geopolitical grounds drove the collective West's war on Syria.
The publication of allegedly leaked Pentagon documents indicated that the Ukrainian military intelligence officials planned, in numbers and tactics, to take advantage of what Sputnik called the "long-time US proxy against Russian forces in Syria" to attack Russian forces in Syria. An act that might have severe ramifications for multiple parties in the war-torn Arab country.
The Washington Post, in their report on the leaked files, highlighted that the Ukrainian plan would have been an "introduction of a new battlefield" located "thousands of miles from the war in Ukraine" which appeared to be designed to "impose costs and casualties on Russia and its Wagner paramilitary group."
According to the leaks, the Syria operation would have provided Ukraine with "deniability options" given that the Russian positions that would be targeted were previously attacked by US-backed and Turkish-backed militias fighting the Syrian government on Syrian territories.
Understanding the document, credibility, rhetoric
It is worth noting that the documents bore the mark HCS-P, which stands for HUMINT Control System - Product. In other words, the documents are part of the final report, which is the product of the raw operational intelligence compiled over a time period.
WashPo claimed to have exclusively obtained the document which was not reported on during the frenzy of the Ukraine documents leaked by Jack Teixeira.
In 2015, the Russian military intervened in Syria, following an official government request by the host country, and it was in line with that intervention that Russia deployed personnel and equipment to the Syrian territories and established fortified bases.
In 2014, before Russia's intervention, and just after the color revolution in Ukraine, which tipped the scale in favor of the collective West, the Carnegie Middle East Center (a US think tank) argued that both Russia and the collective West had a greater interest in maintaining security in Ukraine than in Syria, but that Syria is a geostrategic location which can offer high-risk/high-reward bargains.
In that regard, they wrote, "Leaders in Moscow, Brussels, Berlin, and Washington may well end up using their political leverage in Syria as a bargaining chip to gain concessions where they think it really matters—that is, in Ukraine."
Understanding the choice
Planning for the attack, the WashPo report read, was halted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in December 2022, however, the plan considered "training operatives of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)."
The SDF, which is classified by Sputnik as a US proxy, was described by the Washington Post as "the main partner of US troops in Syria."
The Kurdish forces controlled northeastern Syria under the excuse of Syrian Kurdistan, which allegedly gave the group legitimacy as it breached Syria's territorial integrity and threatened its sovereignty, which proved to be favorable for the US.
As such, the decision to launch strikes against Russia through the SDF would consolidate the "deniability option" by making the attack appear to be attributed to a “front, defunct or active non-state groups.”
According to a new publication by the Levantine Research Unit of the Emirates Policy Center, a UAE think tank, the Kurdish Autonomous Administration, of which the SDF is an integral and major group, understood that any political and tactical trajectory that undermined "US influence in Syria" would inevitably "deal with a major and potentially final blow to the Kurdish national project in Syria."
This comes to show the integral relationship not only between the SDF and the US vis-a-vis their often shared bases, as reported by The Washington Post, but also shows that the existence of a "Kurdish national project" is founded on the presence of US influence in Syria. That influence was regarded by the Syrian government as a flagrant occupation of Syrian territories, coupled with the looting Syria's oil riches.
The strategy: SDF, Ukraine, US & Turkey
Interestingly, the leaked documents show that the Ukrainian military intelligence officers leaned more toward targeting Russian forces through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). They considered that such attacks could be "small", or containable, allowing Ukraine to limit its strikes against the Wagner Group.
Ukrainian intelligence officers argued that the trained SDF operatives would conduct "unspecified 'direct action' activities along with UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] attacks,” the leaked documents read.
SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami denied that claim, telling WashPo “The documents that you are talking about regarding our forces are not real; our forces have never been a side in the Russian-Ukrainian war.”
Opposite to what Shami said, the leaked documents stated, according to The Washington Post, that the SDF sought "training, air defense systems, and a guarantee that its role would be kept secret in exchange for supporting Ukrainian operations" and established a clear condition forbidding any strikes against Russian position within the SDF-controlled region.
Significantly, the documents revealed that Turkey was also aware of the planned potential attack, despite no clear proof of the extent of Ankara's knowledge on the matter. However, The Washington Post reported that Turkey had suggested the Ukrainians stage their attacks away from regions controlled by Turkey-backed militias. To "avoid potential blowback," Ankara proposed the attacks emerge from the Kurdish-controlled region.
It is also worth noting that Turkey believes the SDF to be an enemy, in the sense that it considered its "core military element, the People’s Protection Units or YPG, to be a terrorist group," the Washington Post wrote.
That being said, it is arguable that it would not make sense that Turkey would agree to Ukraine arming an enemy of the state. However, according to a former US official that worked in the region who had spoken to the Washington Post, Turkey considered the elimination of "the military capability and leadership of the SDF" to be a "goal."
In that context, the former official argued, “If Turkey were to be greeted with such a plan, it would be in their interest to bait the Ukraine-SDF alliance into drawing the wrath of Russia.”
In turn, the leaked product recognized that the attacks being planned by Ukraine could "complicate" US operations in eastern Syria in light of the fact that Russia could, as a result of any attack, guard Syrian airspace "more aggressively" and move its air defense weapons.
In that regard, the leak cited, according to the Washington Post, a "previously undisclosed Nov. 27 incident" wherein "a Russian SA-22 air defense system based in eastern Syria fired on a U.S. MQ-9 drone."
Tactic: Location, weaponry, options
A campaign of "notional" covert operations by the Ukrainian intelligence was also revealed by the leaked documents. The product ranked the attacks based on which operations would result in more aggressive Russian retaliations, and which would be the most costly for Russia in terms of damage.
The documents considered that any attack on fortified “priority” Russian facilities near Damascus and the Syrian coast would be very costly for Russia and equally very dangerous for the executing coalition.
The lower risk and lower cost position would be “Russia-affiliated petroleum infrastructure” in central Syria. The leaked files depicted those targets as "poorly protected," and as such, any attack on these locations would impose "modest costs", particularly on Russia's Wagner group.
The product also depicted an escalation graph according to the Washington Post. The highest on the graph was an attack on a “key Russian facility.” Alongside the escalation-rating graph was another graphic, dated 2018, outlining an attack on Latakia’s Bassel Al-Assad Airport. The suggested airport significantly shares facilities with the Hmeimim Air Base, which is considered to be Russia’s primary military base in Syria.
Notably, in 2018 that very air base was targeted by a “swarm” of UAVs that news outlets reported on, saying that “Syrian opposition UAVs" were "used" in the attack.
The documents, according to the Washington Post report, highlighted "the departure point and flight path of the UAV from a location in Idlib governorate around 50 kilometers northeast of the air base and illustrates how it flew over the air base itself." The departure point closely correlates to the location from which Russia said the drones took off.
Moreover, the leaked product also offered potential options. It denoted that the Russian naval base on the Syrian coastal city of Tartus could have been attacked using Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USV).
The lower-risk location exhibited on the escalation graph was an “oil and gas infrastructure” located in central Syria. A photograph, dated January 5, was attached to that option, and indicated that the target was set for the "Wagner-associated Jihar gas plant," which is located in Syria's Palmyra.
On the photograph, The Washington Post revealed, there were weaponry options categorized into “Group 1 or 2 UAVs.” These categories are likely in reference to the US Department of Defense ranking system which, the news outlet, argued was based on the "size, weight and speed of its unmanned aerial vehicles from lowest to highest."
Furthermore, the document also mentioned potential strikes on Wagner positions as one of the lowest-risk objectives for Russian escalation. A shot depicts parked vehicles and facilities at a Wagner facility near the Syrian town of Al-Furqlus.
What happened?
The leaked HCS-P marked document revealed that in November, potential logistical barriers to achieving their targets have been identified by Ukrainian military intelligence officers.
According to the documents, the officers noted complications such as “issues with intra-Kurdish border controls and establishing a base of operations.”
Based on WashPo, the involved officers discovered, by December 29, that the Ukrainian President had "halted their planning". The outlet explained that the document does not reveal any clear and concise reason as to why the operations were halted, however, it assessed a "variety of reasons".
On one end, the Washington Post wrote that what resulted in that decision could have been tied to US pressure, as well as Kiev's limited supply of drones. Moreover, the media outlet said one possibility could have also been that President Volodomyr Zelensky doubted that any of the outlined attacks would succeed in helping Kiev reach its goals.
On the other hand, it was written that the documents explained that the “comparative success” of operations conducted within Russia could have played a role in the decision-making process, leading up to the halt of operations in Syria.
In turn, the documents argued that there is a very low probability that Kiev would "revive the plans" without a green light from both the US and Turkey. Additionally, it was noted that in the event that the plans do get revived and the SDF conducts an attack on behalf of Ukraine, then the attack would likely “incur a Russian response targeting U.S. interests in the region if support for an operation is attributed to the United States.”
US influence in Syria cannot handle another blow
Reports have recently shown that even US and Western analysts believed that the US has failed to "establish deterrence" in Syria and Iraq, which led a number of US officials to urge Pentagon to withdraw US troops from the region.
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, had earlier posted on Twitter "Warmongers in both parties say keeping troops in Syria is necessary to preserve the balance of power. That is simply not true. If they believe that, they should say it directly to the parents of Americans in Syria who have to sleep there tonight and guard oil fields against Iranian drones. We need to bring our troops home."
In parallel, it is noteworthy to remind that Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran's Armed Forces, underlined that Iran's goal to expel US troops from the region will continue until achieved.
Moreover, Bagheri pointed out that Operation Martyr Soleimani, wherein Iran targeted the Ain Al-Assad occupation base in Iraq days after the US assassinated martyr Qassem Soleimani, was the first retaliatory measure that was able to tear down US hegemony in the region in move unseen in the past 70 years.
Significantly, Bagheri warned that the operation was just the beginning of the strategy of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to expel US forces from the region, stressing that this goal will be pursued until achieved.
At a time when Syria has succeeded in resisting the global war against its Arab identity and defending its existence, and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's legitimate position has once again been acknowledged by Arab and global leaders, the US influence in Syria is threatened to dwindle and eventually vanish.
With Syria and Turkey's rapprochement and the Kurdistan Autonomous Administration affirming adherence to Syria's "territorial integrity," the SDF has become significantly less likely to bargain their fate in favor of the US and Ukraine.
The West has lost its war in Syria, despite the long-lasting damage it has created, and the region has established its unwillingness to serve as a pawn in any proxy war that goes against its intrinsic and existential interests amid a changing global political order and geopolitical landscape.
