Ukraine Sent Drones & Operators To HTS Before Offensive That Ousted Assad, WaPo Confirms

While it had been reported in independent as well as Russian media previously, this week The Washington Post offered further confirmation that Ukrainian intelligence had provided Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) with direct drone support in the weeks leading up to the shock offensive which led to the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"Ukrainian intelligence sent about 20 experienced drone operators and about 150 first-person-view drones to the rebel headquarters in Idlib, Syria, four to five weeks ago," wrote Washington Post columnist David Ignatius this week.

Ukrainian officials had previously openly boasted that they would assist in hitting Russian assets and bases in Syria, in order to bog its forces down there and distract the top Russian command from the Ukrainian front lines.

Small drone warfare has been said by many analysts to be a key component further demoralizing Syrian Army positions after Assad's military and state institutions had been essentially hollowed out after years of grinding war and crippling Western sanctions.

The Washington Post wrote:

The aid from Kyiv played only a modest role in overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Western intelligence sources believe. But it was notable as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to strike covertly at Russian operations in the Middle East, Africa and inside Russia itself.

Ukraine’s covert assistance program in Syria has been an open secret, though senior Biden administration officials said repeatedly in answer to my questions that they weren’t aware of it. Ukraine’s motivation is obvious: Facing a Russian onslaught inside their country, Ukrainian intelligence has looked for other fronts where it can bloody Russia’s nose and undermine its clients.

Russia has acknowledged and vehemently condemned this, after Assad fled to Moscow where he and his family were given asylum.

"Ukrainian military instructors from the GUR are present… training HTS fighters for combat operations," Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia told a UN audience soon after the HTS offensive started and took Aleppo.

And more from WaPo on Ukraine entering a 'dirty war' in Syria:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had made a similar claim in September about "Ukrainian intelligence emissaries" in Idlib. He claimed they were conducting “dirty operations,” according to the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan, which asserted that Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR, had been in touch personally with HTS.

Not only does this mean the Zelensky government was directly supporting a US-designated terror organization, but clearly such a clandestine operation would have involved some degree of NATO coordination. 

While it's very clear NATO member Turkey has been propping up both HTS and the "Syrian National Army" (SNA), the latter primarily in Aleppo and north of it, it's a bit of an open question the degree to which Western intelligence was directly guiding the HTS offensive. Certainly HTS has had NATO assistance in the recent past, at the very least. For example a Western intelligence staffed 'operations room' in southern Turkey helped the Islamist coalition take Idlib from Assad forces in the first place, in 2015.