ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The Damascus government released three convicts, two men and a woman, from its prisons on March 26 under a new deal with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Two of the prisoners released by Damascus In exchange for the release of the three prisoners, HTS provided the Damascus government with a map showing the locations of many graves around the Abu Duhur airbase in the southeastern Idlib countryside. According to HTS’ news network, Iba’a, the graves contained the remains of several Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers who were killed during the clashes around the Abu Duhur airbase. In September of 2015, a coalition of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, including HTS’ main core, captured the airbase after besieging it for more than 2 years. Once the attack ended, the terrorists executed dozens of Syrian service members and buried them in mass graves. Omar Ottoman, an official in HTS, told Iba’a that the terrorist group and the Damascus government are still negot...

IMAGE: RIA Novosti/Vladimir Trefilov On March 25, Vasily Prozorov, an officer of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), who had fled to Russia, held a press conference in Moscow. He revealed facts and documents regarding secret torture sites, examples of political fraud, the MH17 tragedy and other key realities of the modern Ukraine. According to the ex-SBU officer,  the Ukrainian government has established a network of secret torture sites in the area of the so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the eastern part of the country.  One of them is located near Mariupol military airport. Prozorov said that he has limited information regarding the torture site but it was active as of January 2017. In the two months of his rotation in the combat zone, in the summer-fall of 2014, more than 300 people passed through this torture site, which is unofficially named “Library”. He added that according to his data, at least 2 people died from tortures there. However, ...

This interview was originally released by  Novaya Gazeta  on  December 19, 2014 . It includes a valuable look at the 2014 events in eastern Ukraine for people interested in the conflict. Translated exclusively for  SouthFront FSB General: [Igor] Strelkov acted at 90% on his own initiative A senior intelligence officer once recruited the future commander in chief of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) military in the security services. They say that there are no wars similar to this one at all. And the prerequisites that pushed them to the escalation are also always different, although the goals can be repeated from time to time, after decades and even centuries. But the motives that force people to take up arms are almost always the same. Some for the sake of attack, some for the sake of defense. Everything else – is nuances. FSB Major General (Ret.) Gennady KAZANTSEV (this is a pseudonym, but we know his real name) is a man with a rich and diverse experien...