Was there a Ukrainian hand in the fall of Assad and HTS takeover of Syria?

War has always been the mother of invention. This quote is attributed to British historian AJP Taylor who argued it in the context of the advent of the tank in the First World War and the atomic bomb in the Second World War. Taylor passed away in 1990, but his argument can easily be extended into the wars fought in the Gulf, Afghanistan and now in Ukraine and Syria. The advent of drones offers corroboration to Taylor’s assertion.

First Person View  (FPV) drones are said to have played a key role in Syrian rebel group HTS — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — taking over the country in a long-winding civil war. Al-Assad dictator Bashar, who inherited the Syrian government from his father Hafez in 2000, was ousted and forced to take a Russia-escorted plane to Moscow over the weekends. This brought an end to the 53-year Assad rule in Syria, which is still in the state of civil war, but whose seat of governance, Damascus, has fallen to the jihadist group HTS.

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For months the world has wondered how HTS could acquire sophisticated drone and cruise missile technologies. While the complete mystery of cruise missile manufacturing is yet to unravel, reports suggest that Ukraine played a role in the Syrian group’s mastery in FPV drone manufacturing.

The connection

According to Clash Report’s exclusive report, Syrian rebel leader Abu Bakr, who headed the FPV drone unit of HTS, reached out to Ukrainian military intelligence for guidance. Negotiations followed and Ukraine “supplied 3-D printing files for key components like bomb carriers, tails, and warheads. This allowed the opposition to produce, assemble, and adapt their drones independently”.

“They taught us about drone mechanics, bomb carriers, and 3D printing,” Clash Report quoted Abu Mazen, an HTS drone operator, as saying in a confirmation of the significant role of Ukrainian training in advancing drone signal transmission and targeting systems.

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By mid-November, Syrian opposition drone teams declared complete readiness, Clash Report quoted Abu Mazen as confidently declaring, “Everything is ready.”

HTS members Abu Bakr and Abu Mazen said Ukraine’s “support was limited to training and guidance”. Ukraine did not get involved directly in HTS’s field operations against Assad’s forces.

A corroboration

On December 6, two days before the Assad regime collapsed in Syria, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported that a high-ranking Iranian foreign ministry official slammed Ukraine for its “support for listed terrorist groups in Syria”. Toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was an Iranian ally.

Iranian official Mojtaba Damirchiloo — Assistant to the Iranian Foreign Minister and Director General of Eurasia Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — called Ukraine’s actions “a blatant violation of international commitments related to the prevention and combat of terrorism”. He called for “immediate cessation” of Ukrainian support to Syrian rebel fighters.

A denial

Ukraine has denied its involvement in the Syrian civil war. On December 4, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying it “categorically rejects the Russian Federation’s baseless accusations of its alleged involvement in the aggravation of the security situation in Syria”.

Russia had accused Ukraine of aiding the opposition forces led by HTS in Syria against Assad, an ally of Moscow and helped out by President Vladimir Putin on a number of occasions beginning an intervention with air strikes in 2015.

In its statement, Ukraine blamed Russia and Iran “for the steady trend of worsening security in Syria”, saying the two countries bear the “primary responsibility” for the situation there.

Ukraine also showed its dislike for the toppled Syrian president, saying “it is the crimes of the Assad regime against its own people and its unwillingness to ensure a fair dialogue within the country that have jeopardised the survival of Syria as a single independent state”.

However, Ukraine has been involved in Syria

In September this year, Ukrainian news outlet the Kyiv Post ran an “exclusive” story saying that the “fighters of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (GUR MOU) from the Khimik group attacked a Russian military base in Syria on the morning of Sunday, September 15”.

It quoted a military intelligence source to say that “the operation took place on the southeastern outskirts of Aleppo”. The Kyiv Post also reported having received and verified relevant footage of the Ukrainian attack on the Russian base in Syria’s Aleppo, which became a key trophy in the war against the Assad forces as the rebel force led by HTS ran through the country in a swift campaign of two weeks.

This Russian base was the site where its troops manufactured and tested attack unmanned aerial vehicles or drones.

The undeniable mimic

China is the world’s leading drone-maker, controlling about 80 per cent of the global drone market. But reports on recent trends show that Chinese DJI-Mavic drones may now be losing out to innovations made in Ukraine and companies supplying improved drones to Ukraine.

The new drones used by Ukraines are lighter, smaller and more precisely guided — FPV, First Person View UAVs. Reports cite similarities between Ukrainian drones and those used by HTS in Syria in its advance against Assad’s forces.

HTS went in for mass production of drones using 3-D printers, reportedly provided by the Ukrainian military. The Syrian rebel group established protected facilities to manufacture bomb-dropping mechanisms and other payloads for Mavics (Chinese) and FPVs (Ukrainian innovation). They used the same tactics — mobile groups armed with pickup trucks and bikes — as used by the Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region against Russian forces to disarm and drive out Assad’s forces in Syria.

The FPVs proved to be so effective that within a month of HTS drone unit declaring its readiness with the technology the Syrian army under Assad lost many battles and ultimately the war, forcing a dictator who ran an ancient civilisational nation by iron hand to flee to one his benefactors — in the refuge of Putin.