https://thegrayzone.com/2024/08/05/us-russia-prisoner-swap-cia-chechen-jihad/
This GrayZone article also caught my eye. I was glad to see that in all the hysteria regarding Russia, there's a story about Chechnya that's been largely forgotten.
I wrote about Krasikov and Khangoshvili back in 2021 and 2022, and I've been writing about US involvement in Chechnya for years. I've been following those events since the 1990's and the aftermath of the First Chechen War. I remember being puzzled around the year 2000 that the pro-militant website Kavkaz Center was permitted a presence on US servers. Over time I began to understand why.
Of course the 2022 piece I wrote was written just prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That led to a significant shift within German politics.
In light of the prisoner swap, it's clear that Krasikov is indeed a Russian intelligence asset and carried out the assassination. Again, if al Qaeda members walked openly in the streets of Russia, you can be sure the US would also employ assassins, drones, or whatever means to kill them.
As the article states, the most salient point is that in the process of this exchange, it has been acknowledged that Khangoshvili and the whole Chechen-Georgian (via the Pankisi Gorge) operation was and has been backed by the United States. It would be like Mexican guerrillas based out of Chihuahua and fighting in Texas - but backed by China. Can you even imagine the scandal? It's no less so here. And then imagine one of the most notorious fighters is involved in other regional conflicts - say in California or on the Canadian border and then come to find out he escapes and walks around openly in China or Pakistan. How would the Americans respond?
And yet it's really much worse than that - Khangoshvili was a commander at Nazran in 2004 - the Chechen raid that resulted in over one hundred Russian deaths including dozens of security forces. The raid was led by Shamil Basayev who to the Russians at the time was the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. Basayev was killed by an explosion in 2006. It remains unclear as to whether or not it was an accident or a deliberate assassination.
Obviously there are not a few American readers that will take umbrage at such arguments on the basis of moral equivalence. American Exceptionalism means that if American assassinates people on the streets in other countries, it's not just permissible, it's right. If Russia does it - it's an outrage and needs to be condemned by the whole world.
It's clear than Khangoshvili was a Western asset - Germany's BND often functions as a stand-in for the CIA which more or less has the power to direct it. The BND frequently breaks German law at the behest of the Americans. The German Bundestag knows this and does nothing. That makes it pretty clear just who is in charge.
The tale of these Chechen fighters overlaps with al Qaeda and there were rumblings of Islamist fighters in Bosnia during the war in the 1990s - I recall at the time this being but one of many factors that led me to question US policy and military involvement. To no one's surprise some would simply move into Albania and later became involved with the KLA and its fight against Serbia. Others would return to Chechnya for the next round of war with Russia.
US media doesn't cover these stories nor this angle of the prisoner swap. It's not in their interest to do so. And who or what determines their interest? The corporations that own these outlets, the very corporations wed to the centres of US power.
See also:
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-geopolitics-of-dead-georgian-in.html
https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2022/01/follow-up-on-chechen-murdered-in-berlin.html
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