Throughout its four-year war against Ukraine, Russia has deliberately widened the geopolitical rift between the Global South and the West. The Kremlin seeks to circumvent oil-related sanctions, while weaponizing threats posed by Uzbek and Tajik militants of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) to portray Kyiv and its Western partners as complicit with global jihadi networks. This was exemplified on October 13, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced it foiled an assassination plot targeting a senior military officer, which was allegedly orchestrated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in coordination with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Propaganda about the Assassination Plot
Four suspects were detained — three Russian nationals and one Central Asian — for allegedly planning a suicide attack in central Moscow. The operation was reportedly directed by IS operative Saidakbar Gulomov from bases in Ukraine and Western Europe. The FSB also claimed Gulomov was involved in the December 2024 assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who headed Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops. Wanted by both Uzbekistan and Russia, Gulomov is believed to be of Uzbek origin, but no verified links to Ukraine, IS, or ISKP have been established. This blurs the line between war propaganda and legitimate counterterrorism analysis.
Russia’s FSB, which is the successor to the once-formidable KGB and remains the cornerstone of Putin’s domestic power, was the main architect and amplifier of conspiracy narratives claiming Western collaboration with ISKP to support Ukraine. Speaking at the 57th Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Security Council session in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on October 16, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov asserted that Western private military companies were supplying ISKP with resources and facilitating the transfer of militants from the Middle East to Afghanistan to bolster ISKP. According to Bortnikov, ISKP aims to consolidate control over northern Afghanistan up to the CIS borders and has launched online propaganda in Tajik, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and, most recently, Kazakh languages.
Bortnikov further claimed that foreign intelligence services are aiding ISKP’s expansion of training camps and recruitment of Central Asian and Russian nationals, allegedly to undermine the Taliban and destabilize the CIS’s southern frontier. Drawing on IS’s Middle Eastern experience, Bortnikov warned that ISKP seeks to infiltrate the Fergana Valley under the banner of a “global caliphate.”
Disinformation Campaigns about Chechen Separatists
Following Russia’s failed assault on Kyiv and withdrawal from northern and central Ukraine in 2022, the FSB intensified its disinformation campaigns, alleging that Central Asian and North Caucasian jihadists were fighting for Ukraine. Pro-FSB Telegram channels accused Abdulhakim al-Shishani (Rustam Azhiyev), emir of the Chechen group Ajnad al-Kavkaz, of moving over 100 militants from Idlib to Ukraine. The same channels claimed Ukraine’s SBU, Turkey, and Western security services were colluding with global terrorist networks.
Pro-Kremlin media and military bloggers framed al-Shishani’s participation on Ukraine’s side as evidence of CIA and European intelligence leveraging Sunni jihadi groups to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Yet al-Shishani’s own motives reflected not IS or al-Qaeda’s global jihadi banner, but rather Chechen separatism and the enduring fight for Ichkerian independence. A veteran of both Chechen wars who fled to Turkey and later Syria to escape Russian persecution, he believes that by fighting in Ukraine, he continues Ichkeria’s struggle.
Ichkerian separatism—not the global jihad alleged by the FSB—has united former Chechen resistance fighters against Russia in Ukraine. They now serve across five formations: the Sheikh Mansur, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and Khamzat Gelayev battalions; the Mad Pack assault group; and al-Shishani’s Special Purpose Force. The latter was formed by Akhmed Zakayev, who heads the Ichkerian government-in-exile.
IS and al-Qaeda’s Perceptions of Russia’s War in Ukraine
Both ISIS and al-Qaeda initially characterized Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “Crusader-on-Crusader” war and “divine punishment” and urged Muslims to remain neutral. However, the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack by four Tajik ISKP militants gave Moscow a new pretext to accuse Ukraine and Western intelligence of aiding global jihadi networks. Despite IS’s prompt and explicit claim of responsibility through its Amaq and al-Naba publications, Bortnikov persisted in alleging that Ukraine’s SBU, backed by Western intelligence—particularly the US and UK—had orchestrated the attack.
In August 2025, Russia’s Investigative Committee concluded its probe into the Crocus City Hall massacre, indicting 29 suspects in a Moscow court. Eighteen months after the attack, the FSB’s once-blistering anti-U.S. rhetoric noticeably softened, although the so-called “Ukrainian trace” narrative endures. The Committee alleged links between ISKP operatives and Ukraine’s SBU, but refrained from implicating the broader West.
This recalibration reflects changing geopolitical realities under the new Trump administration. Unlike the Biden era’s unwavering support for Kyiv, the Trump administration has sought rapprochement with Moscow, including holding a summit in Anchorage and planning another in Hungary. This has prompted moderation in the FSB’s narrative.
Central Asian Leaders’ Perceptions
The leaders of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—whose citizens stand accused in the Crocus attack—condemned terrorism but refrained from blaming Ukraine or Western intelligence. Their restraint underscores both their delicate balancing between Moscow and the West and their long-standing habitual acceptance of the Kremlin’s manipulation of the “global jihadi threat” as a political tool to keep post-Soviet states within Russia’s orbit and reinforce the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) framework. The FSB’s allegations of ISKP’s links to Ukraine and the West have nonetheless found little resonance among Central Asia’s political elites or religious communities.
Since Putin’s rise in 2000, the Kremlin has pursued a strategy of coercing states in its Central Asian “soft underbelly” by deftly exploiting the security threat posed by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in Afghanistan to position itself as the region’s principal guarantor of stability. Under the banner of “regional security,” it expanded and modernized military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, pressured Bishkek in 2014 to close the U.S. Transit Center at Manas, and consolidated influence through the CSTO and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Following the 2015 deployment of its Khmeimim Air Base in Syria, Moscow recast itself as the main bulwark against Central Asian jihadi factions affiliated with ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—amplifying the threat of returning foreign fighters to justify its regional dominance.
The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan and HTS’s entrenchment in Syria have since exposed the manipulative nature of Moscow’s security narrative. In July, Russia became the first major power and permanent UN Security Council member to formally recognize the Taliban. Putin’s reception of Ahmed al-Sharaa moreover at the Kremlin underscored the pragmatism of his diplomacy as he shook hands with the very figure once used to intimidate Central Asian elites.
Conclusion
FSB chief Bortnikov’s claims that Ukraine and Western intelligence orchestrated the 2024 ISKP attacks in Moscow revive the Kremlin’s early 2000s tactic of pressuring Central Asia with the specter of jihadist incursions. Though geopolitical realities, the nature of security threats, and Central Asian jihadism have evolved, but the FSB’s instruments of manipulation and coercive influence under Putin remain unchanged. Moscow’s instrumentalization of the ISKP threat, in particular, serves a dual purpose: to discredit Ukraine and the West while reinforcing Russia’s coercive influence in Central Asia. Beneath the rhetoric lies a strategic warning to regional governments—avoid repeating the “Ukrainian mistake” and remain within Moscow’s orbit amid the sharpening competition between Russia, China, and the West in the region.
