May 24: Meduza, How the FSB recruits ex-ISIS fighters to spy on Ukraine
“You really are a terrorist. Just tell them you don't love Russia. "
How the FSB recruits ex-ISIS fighters to spy on Ukraine
Published by Meduza, May 17, 2023
Russian intelligence services have been living in wartime for more than a year, and very little is known about their work since the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova and terrorist organization researcher Vera Mironova found out that, among other things, the FSB recruits former Islamic State militants and tries to infiltrate them into Chechen groups and Crimean Tatar battalions fighting on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Here's how the system works.
When Baurzhan Kultanov first found himself in the Islamic State in January 2014, the cities of Syria and Iraq captured by terrorists hardly surprised him. Trying to explain to the Meduza correspondent how the militants live, he compares Raqqa , at that moment the capital of the Caliphate , either with Istanbul, where Baurzhan met with recruiters, or with his native Astrakhan.
“The same way of life as everywhere else,” says Kultanov. - Women sit at home, go to the market - just like in Russia. Unless constantly drones fly over the city - and bomb. Well, all the flags are black. All men are armed.
There was another phenomenon in Raqqa that was reminiscent of Russia: the constant attention of local security officials to potential oppositionists. “The security service of the caliphate is like the FSB. Dissenters were found, imprisoned or killed,” recalls the former militant. “I myself said a lot of things, but somehow I was not afraid of the consequences: I always had a weapon with me, and explosives on my belt.”
Kultanov ended up in a jamaat with fellow Astrakhan Shamil Izmailov, who was called Abu Hanifa in ISIS. After six months at the front (Baurzhan’s detachment fought against the Syrian opposition, and against the Kurds, and against Al-Qaeda) and being wounded in the temple, the militant realized that the plots of ISIS propaganda videos, in which local women cried and asked for help, are at odds with reality . “He began to disappear, miss amalia ,” recalls Baurzhan. “I went to help the Muslims, but in the end it dawned on me that ISIS itself is creating chaos. And that you have to get out."
Baurzhan twice tried to escape from the territory of the "Islamic state", but he was detained by the police of the caliphate and the "amniyat" . “In November [2014] I paid $100 to the conductor and I was finally taken to Turkey. From Syria it seemed that it was something unreal; that there is no place in the whole world where I could live from scratch. But it turns out it's not all that difficult."
WAS HE REALLY IN ISIS?
Returning to Istanbul, Kultanov first of all asked for political asylum at the UN. But he hid from officials that he fought in ISIS. When they found out about this, the police took the former militant to a deportation prison: “I didn’t really understand Turkish, but I caught that in Russia a case had been opened against me. After all, even on VKontakte I had photos from the ribats posted - the same ones that went to the FSB evidence base.
One night — Kultanov remembered the exact date, June 18, 2015 — strangers in civilian clothes came to his cell . “When I realized that I was now being deported, I opened my veins,” Baurzhan recalls. - I was patched up - and then beaten. At the airport, I pulled away from them again - and they beat me again. So much so that the seams on the wrists parted. So on the plane, I was covered in my own blood.”
At Vnukovo, Kultanov's flight was met by riot police and the FSB. “Turkish handcuffs were removed from me, Russian handcuffs were put on,” Baurzhan recalls. “Operative Maxim showed me a photo where I am sitting on a tank with a machine gun: do you recognize it?”
From the airport Kultanov was taken to Astrakhan. The FSB captain Alexander Gushchin, who was in charge of the criminal case against Kultanov, personally came to the airport to pick up the militant.
ALEXANDER GUSHCHIN
In the building of the Astrakhan department of the FSB, Kultanov "was waiting for 10 employees, if not more." “Some in balaclavas, some in uniform,” recalls the former militant. - Ten of them stood over me - and shouted: “Let's sign the confession! Or maybe stick a pipe up your ass and run barbed wire down the pipe? Or bring electricity to you? Or take him out into the woods and shoot him like a terrorist? And the children go to an orphanage.”
On the very first day, Kultanov signed a confession, and Alexander Pisarev , one of the FSB investigators who worked on the Baurzhan case, reacted unexpectedly mildly to the militant.
“He showed me all my articles - “participation in illegal armed formations” , “recruitment” , “mercenarism” - and says: “Well, this is twenty. But if you cooperate, we will make the term lower than the lowest “,” Baurzhan recalls.
The case was considered in a special order - and Kultanov was given only four years and four months. On the eve of the verdict, Captain Gushchin spoke to Baurzhan for the first time about the opportunity to cooperate with the special services. “We’ll give you a term at the minimum wage, and when you’re free, we’ll make an agent out of you,” Kultanov retells the words of the future curator.
WAS HE REALLY JUDGED?
Cooperation began already in the colony, says Kultanov. “I waved protocols to Gushchin and gave false evidence. By order of the FSB, he appeared on television ,” Baurzhan recalls. Most often, the operatives showed Kultanov photographs of people he did not know, in which he had to "identify" the militants.
“To be honest, I signed so many testimonies that I almost don’t remember the details,” Kultanov admits.
WHO WERE FABRICATED CASES?
In 2018 , shortly before Kultanov's release from the colony, Gushchin took him to the FSB building, seated him at the table, and brought him a cooperation agreement with the special service. “Read it - you will have to sign it,” Baurzhan recalls the operative’s laconic instructions. - Management is interested in you. And I will be your resident - I will supervise you. There are two copies - for you and for me.
In addition to a bunch of formalities that Kultanov did not remember (“something about state secrets, non-disclosure and a salary of 30 thousand rubles”), the contract indicated his new undercover name - Ruslan. “I signed, but Gushchin kept both copies for himself:“ Well, you’re in prison now - let it lie with me for now, ”Baurzhan recalls.
Kultanov was released in 2019 , but the FSB allowed him not to comply with administrative supervision . Instead, Gushchin told the agent about his first business trip - to Ukraine.
— How will I get there? What will I do there? - Kultanov recalls his questions to the curator.
We will organize everything. We are now interested in having our agents there... In Ukraine, we are planning soon.
"You are our eyes and ears there"
In 2019, they began preparing Kultanov for infiltration into “Chechen groups and Tatar battalions who want to fight for the Armed Forces of Ukraine ,” recalls the former militant in a conversation with Meduza, instructions from his curators. The FSB wanted to know "complete information" about the supply and personnel of the formations.
Over the legend of the cover in the special services "decided not to bother," recalls Kultanov. “You don’t have to invent anything: your history and combat experience speak for themselves,” Baurzhan retells Alexander Gushchin’s explanations. - You really are a terrorist, a Muslim, you were sitting with us. Just tell them that you don't like Russia with the FSB and want to help. They will take you with hands and feet.”
To prepare Kultanov for infiltration, Gushchin's colleague in the Astrakhan Directorate of the FSB, operative Vadim Stetsenko, began working with him. He probably knew Ukraine better than anyone among his colleagues: before the annexation of Crimea, Stetsenko lived in Sevastopol and served in the counterintelligence of the SBU. “And then he went over to the side of the FSB,” says Baurzhan.
VADIM STETSENKO
Detailed instructions Kultanov perceived with difficulty. “To be honest, I didn’t even remember all these Ukrainian chips. I’ve never been there — when you don’t know life, it’s hard to remember,” Baurzhan admits to Meduza. - And Vadim, right up to choosing a local SIM card and areas of residence, advised: “I know Kyiv, I know Kharkov. You live in such and such an apartment - I have people there.
From conversations with the new curator, Kultanov learned that the special service was interested in Isa Akaev , the commander of the Islamic volunteer battalion "Crimea" , which has been at war with Russia since 2014 and is assembled from Crimean Tatars, Chechens and Kabardians.
In the spring of 2022, it was the “Crimea” fighters who were among the first to enter the village of Motyzhin, near Kiev, liberated from Russian troops, and found the bodies of the killed civilians. In March of the same year, Akayev promised to kill Russian soldiers "by all means permitted by Sharia." “Just don’t forget to put seeds in your pocket so that sunflowers grow [out of your bodies,” he added .
Officially, the FSB began looking for Akaev only after that, but the “Crimean Tatar underground” in general, the special service was “obsessed” after the annexation, says Andrey Soldatov, a researcher of the Russian special services. “One FSB officer admitted to me that in 2014, when they had to create a department [of the FSB on the peninsula] from scratch, they simply opened the archives and looked at which line the KGB had a priority in some 1974. And it says: “Fight Crimean Tatar nationalism,” recalls Soldatov. “And they began to fight .”
The FSB even drew up written instructions describing the stages of Kultanov's infiltration into the Krym battalion, and Baurzhan kept this paper, with handwritten notes made by curators.
The secret service’s task was to “reach out to Isa Akaev,” but “let Ruslan first read about him on the Internet,” the document says (it is at the disposal of Meduza). “In the course of contact with Ukrainian friends ”, Kultanov was supposed to “asked if they had any exits” to the commander of the “Crimea” - and to find out if they could “make inquiries for this dick”. (Akaev did not respond to Meduza's message.)
At the next stage, “Ruslan” had to hint to his Ukrainian acquaintances “that he has “brothers” in Astrakhan who are ready for difficult work,” and “find out how much the volunteers who joined the battalion are paid, the procedure for leaving for Ukraine ... and conditions in which to work. If “Ukrainian friends don’t know a damn thing, we merge the topic,” sums up the author of the instruction.
Stetsenko set another task for Kultanov. “We should recognize the Turkish charitable foundation IHH , which sponsors terrorists in Ukraine and Syria, because people get to Ukraine through them,” his curator reasoned.
Officially, the IHH Foundation is engaged in humanitarian projects in zones of armed conflict, but in 2010 Germany banned the activities of this organization: as the German authorities put it, “under the guise of humanitarian aid” the NPO financed Hamas . “IHH is really working with Russian-speakers in Turkey,” Vera Mironova , a terrorist researcher, told Meduza . IHH did not respond to Meduza's questions.
Both curators - both Gushchin and Stetsenko - were noticeably encouraged by the prospects of introducing Kultanov into the milieu of volunteers fighting for Ukraine, Baurzhan recalls. The FSB officers believed that as a result, the former militant would even be able to "go out to the Ukrainian special services."
Gushchin, according to Kultanov, generally spoke openly about his plans: “It would be nice to make you a double or even triple agent! So that other special services want to recruit you.”
Kultanov had a strong feeling that even then his curators were "preparing for something in Ukraine." “You are our eyes and ears there,” Baurzhan recounts their comments. “But you are not the only one.”
“A man with a Syrian background comes and says he wants to fight for the Armed Forces of Ukraine”
On November 29, 2022, Vera Mironova, a researcher of terrorist organizations, was approached by a militant of the Caucasus Emirate named Walid : he called her by phone directly from the Russian colony.
Mironova is familiar with many veterans of the Islamic underground, as she has conducted research in Chechnya, Dagestan, as well as in Syria and Iraq (she accompanied the Iraqi special forces during their several operations against ISIS); now she advises the Ukrainian authorities on these issues.
“Walid fought with the second Chechen army, he has been in prison for a very long time, and he will be in prison for another seven years,” Mironova tells Meduza. “And now he calls from the colony and starts: ‘I want to go to the front through the Wagner PMC , and then surrender to Ukraine — could you help with that?’”
HOW PMC WAGNER RECRUITED PRISONERS
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The prisoner and the researcher living in the USA began a correspondence . After some time, Walid shared that he was not taken to the PMC - but the special services showed interest. “The FSB wanted its own cinema,” wrote Walid Mironova. - Dirty work: to clean up [kill] who needs to be scouted. Ukraine - first. [Would send] as a loner. But there are many such singles.”
As far as Mironova knows, Walid has an impeccable reputation among former militants: “This is still the old Caucasus Emirate, an authoritative dude, he is in touch with everyone – even from the colony he talked non-stop with everyone.” This interested the FSB. “They know that I know many people. Their [Chechens], who are in Europe, Turkey and Syria [that is, living there],” the prisoner wrote to Vera.
The prisoner refused the offer of the FSB - and this is the last thing Mironova knows about him. Immediately after the connection with Walid disappeared.
Meduza is also aware of yet another attempt by the FSB to recruit a former militant. Dagestani Karim said that he fought in ISIS, was in the same jamaat with Baurzhan Kultanov, and also served time for this after returning to his homeland.
KARIM'S STORY IN DETAIL
In 2019, after Karim was released from the colony, he was contacted by an FSB officer named Peter . Karim could not refuse to communicate, because he was afraid of persecution by the special services, and he met with the operative several times in cafes and squares in the Prospekt Vernadsky metro area, “not far from their [FSB] headquarters . ”
Karim understood that his extremist background had turned him into "a coveted target for recruitment - to make him a snitch." The operative asked the former militant about people from the Caucasus Emirate or ISIS sleeper cells, but, according to Karim, he did not share any information: “So that there is no kufr on my part . It is unacceptable to help an FSB officer against a believer.”
When Peter's questions were replaced by demands to give out information, Karim "understood that he had to get lost - and left the country." Now he maintains contacts with diasporas in different countries - and emphasizes that among Muslims who left Russia for Ukraine, there is constant talk about recruitment by special services: "Because of this, no one trusts anyone."
According to Karim, the FSB is constantly interested in Russians who are going to “help-fight” Ukrainian troops. “They establish their full names, the route is established, who helped along the route. Yesterday, my relative, who came to St. Petersburg to work, was detained by local officers - and they interrogated about me: where am I now. They began to put pressure, rolled out the theory that “Your Karim is fighting in the Donetsk direction as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we know!”
People with an extremist past do get to the front in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian special services, says Vera Mironova, recruited her to analyze this situation: “Of course, there were FSB agents who penetrated the territory of Ukraine: some managed to block the entrance. And it happened that, having crossed the border in an unknown way, a person with a Syrian background comes and says that he “wants to fight for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Who will undertake to assert that he is not a spy?
Mironov also knows about the incident when a man "tried by hook or by crook to get a list of one of the international battalions." “People with whom I am in contact in the special services just said: ‘We have an agent here again’,” the researcher says. - There were also questions about the dude, who constantly jumped from squad to squad. Why do that, except if you need to gather information?”
A source close to the FSB also told Meduza that attempts to infiltrate Ukraine are constantly taking place. However, not all of them are successful. “The last [task] that I know about, the faces once again failed,” says the source, “In general, the issue of the faces is very mature. [After tearing down management] they just crawl out of meetings.”
In January 2023, Ukraine announced the exposure of more than 600 Russian agents and spies. The SBU describes this process as a fight against "cancer that spreads its metastases and devours healthy cells."
But agents continue to be sent - and not only to Ukraine, but also to the US border.
How Russia is trying to send its agents to the US through the Mexican border
On March 8, 2023, Congressman Pat Fallon from Texas demanded a public report from the US Customs and Border Protection Service about how carefully Russians trying to get into the US from Mexico are being checked.
"Our southern border is vulnerable!" Fallon said . The Northern Command of the US Armed Forces has already warned about the activation of GRU officers in Mexico, the congressman recalled, and since the fall of 2022, more than 21,000 Russians have tried to get into the States from Mexico. “The majority do not have documents with them ,” the Republican is indignant. “So what is the chance that their real identities will be established at the border?”
Since February 2022, about 50 Russians have been identified and detained on the US-Mexico border, whom the US authorities suspect of working for the FSB, says Vera Mironova, a researcher of terrorist organizations. She received this information from her interlocutors in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with whom Mironova maintains contacts as an expert on terrorism.
The detainees were announced at different - from Arizona to California - border crossings, but with the same story. “Most say: ‘I am an activist, or an NGO worker, or a journalist. I was at the protests - now I'm being harassed. Let me in,” says Mironova. “Caught 50 – do you have any idea how many they didn’t catch?”
Plans for similar implementations were discussed in the presidential administration back in early 2020, one of the Russian public figures who regularly communicates with the authorities told Meduza.
“Then I ended up at the Presidential Administration for a meeting with [Deputy Head of the Kremlin Department for Domestic Policy Timur] Prokopenko,” the source recalls. “He talked about his and Kiriyenko’s initiative to create several decent-looking NGOs and recognize them as “foreign agents” in order to then introduce them as agents in the West. I was offered to assemble a team under one such NGO. It sounded that some too “loyal [to the Russian authorities]” moments in my biography are “this, of course, is a minus, but we will polish it.”
Meduza's sources in the presidential administration have not heard of such an initiative: "Perhaps some personal idea of Prokopenko." Meduza was unable to find any information about the creation of such NGOs.
According to Vera Mironova, now some Russians on the border of Mexico and the United States are surrendering to American border guards with the words: “The FSB sent us here to spy on the opposition and journalists - but we don’t want to, we want to surrender; urgently give us political asylum, otherwise the FSB will turn our heads off at home” (there is no additional confirmation of this).
According to Mironova, two Russian-speaking men claimed to have been recruited by the FSB, with one specifying that this happened during his imprisonment. The alleged agents told the border guards (the content of these two interviews with Mironova, according to her, is known from an employee of the US DHS) that their names are Alexander Davydov and Ivan Cherkashin, and they allegedly worked for Centro.press and Dobrovideo.ru. One of the men even gave the name of his curator as Anton Sergeevich (Meduza does not know who it is).
Dobrovideo.ru is not the media, but the personal website of Belgorod photographer Yevgeny Nagikh, whose team, as Nagikh himself told Meduza, no one tried to leave for the United States.
On the website of the news aggregator Centro.press, we managed to find only one article authored by Alexander Davydov - this is an interview published in 2019 by an “expert in the field of state procurement” under the heading “How to promote your business by participating in public procurement?”. The site's editor-in-chief Igor Kuznetsov asked Meduza's correspondent to pass questions on to the publication's founder , Maria Fil; she did not answer the letter.
It is possible that the men did not even cross paths with the FSB, but simply complained to the American border guards about such contacts in order to obtain asylum, Mironova believes: “This is a politically very good case: “They tried to recruit me, but I didn’t give in.”
Some volunteers helping Russian-speaking migrants to get from Mexico to the United States are suspicious of the American authorities, Mironova claims, citing the MVB. “It is believed that these groups were made by the Russian special services,” says the researcher.
For example, the Bridge to the USA volunteer group offered assistance to immigrants from the “post-Soviet countries” and claimed that it “helps enter America in a legal way” and “cooperates directly” with the US border service. Most's lawyers charged between two and three thousand dollars for their work. In December 2022, the Russians who founded the organization were detained by Mexican authorities with more than half a million dollars in cash “in a black bag.” It was not possible to reach Meduza at the number indicated on the blocked site mostvusa.org.
"No matter what happens, never say we sent you"
In 2021, the plans of the FSB for Baurzhan Kultanov changed. “You will not go to Ukraine directly, but through Turkey,” he recalls the words of his Astrakhan curator Alexander Gushchin.
In the same autumn, Kultanov was given a package of documents to cover: foreign and internal passports, a birth certificate, a policy, and even a driver's license in a new name - Muhammad Abdullaevich Usmanov.
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE?
And then Kultanov got a new curator - this time from Moscow, from the central apparatus of the special services. Vladislav Alekseevich, as he introduced himself to Baurzhan, seemed to him more knowledgeable than his predecessors: for example, he let slip that he was “working on Syria” and “he mentioned various jamaats.”
“It seemed to me that he was a counterintelligence officer,” Kultanov recalls their first meeting. - He said, they say, “I want to send you to Turkey, among Russian emigrants , especially since you know the country and are Turkic yourself.” Put on a polygraph. And he said to wait.
From that day until April 2023, Kultanov was in constant contact with Vladislav Alekseevich. And even met him personally in Moscow.
VLADISLAV ALEKSEEVICH VORONIN
In the spring of 2022, Kultanov was invited to the FSB safe house on Kulikov Street in Astrakhan. There, Baurzhan was met by a whole group who had specially flown in from Moscow: the curator Vladislav Voronin, Voronin's boss (Baurzhan did not remember that this man introduced himself) and two women - psychologists of the special services.
Psychologists tried to prepare Kultanov for stressful situations: they role-played an interrogation at the Turkish customs - and even a situation when Baurzhan was caught and tried to split the Turkish special services. “No matter what happens, never say that we sent you,” the former militant recalls their instructions.
Next, the FSB officers conducted a series of attentiveness tests: they asked Kultanov to leave the room for a few minutes and then return. “What was already on the table, what was not? What was I wearing? What was in my hands? - Baurzhan recalls the questions that rained down on him.
He could not answer any of them; the FSB officers had to repeat the test 15 times until Kultanov stopped failing it. “Train your memory,” Baurzhan recalls their words. “Wherever you are, we need good information.”
The preparation at the safe house lasted three days. On the last day, Kultanov was given five thousand dollars (for the first two months of implementation) and was told to buy tickets to Istanbul. “Vladislav’s boss tried to cheer me up, you know? Baurzhan recalls. “Well done, we are doing a common thing, don’t worry! Just adapt there - and make contacts with everyone you can with. ”
On March 25, 2022, Kultanov flew to Turkey - and since then he has been in constant contact with Vladislav Voronin, as well as with Igor Yatskevich from the Astrakhan department of the FSB.
IGOR YATSKEVICH
Kultanov was instructed to find out “who is preparing what against Russia” and to collect any information related to Ukraine. “How can one get to the front through Turkey, who is transporting people to volunteer battalions, what do local Ukrainians say,” Baurzhan lists his assignments. - And Vladislav asked to establish contact with rescue volunteers who [at the beginning of 2023] went to Syria after the earthquake . He needed this ‘road’ to shove his people into the territory of Idlib .”
RUSSIAN SPECIAL SERVICES INFILTRATE THEIR AGENTS IN GEORGIA AS WELL
“Let everyone know that I am an agent” Meduza tells the story of Vsevolod Osipov, a libertarian who was recruited by the Eshniks. And then they were sent to Georgia to monitor emigrants from Russia
Kultanov gave Meduza copies of his correspondence with both curators, as well as video recordings of telephone conversations with them (the videos filmed by Baurzhan show his face and phone numbers, which NumBuster identifies as contacts of Voronin and Yatskevich).
For example, on February 28, 2023, Kultanov sent Yatskevich a photo of his new Istanbul acquaintance, a representative, as Baurzhan put it , of a “closed club” that sends people and goods to Ukraine:
- You, [Igor,] should know him. He is very famous, as I understand it: Basaevsky , he ran in the forest at one time. Now I cross paths with him in Bashak - slowly but surely. There is their jamaat here. They have a lot of exits, and I'm slowly doing their business. I sent a parcel to the prison in Baghdad at their request: I bought food. They can send to Ukraine. To Syria too.
- This is interesting.
“This jamaat also communicates purely using some kind of iPhone program — they told me to buy an iPhone for myself, and what I’ll buy with.
- Show me the work, we've already discussed the money.
In one of the correspondence, Yatskevich asked Kultanov: “Do you go to the [Istanbul] Basaksehir region, where do immigrants from Russia live? I'll send you the address and a photo - can you see if there is one there?
The picture shows a man in camouflage, he is standing on a snow-covered slope. A walkie-talkie antenna protrudes from his breast pocket. “[Name is] Mylan, ground floor apartment . This is an old photo from 10 years ago. Kazakh from Astrakhan. [Find out] what he does, with whom he lives. Be careful. You can also look around for other immigrants from Russia.”
The curator asked Kultanov to take photographs during his reconnaissance in Basakshehir - but not to take pictures of "everyone in a row", but "only those who were in Syria - or traveled to Ukraine."
Yatskevich did not explain the reasons for his interest in Maylan, but Kultanov has his own version of this assignment. “It was just that there were undercover tasks - and there were purely monetary ones,” he argues. - How did Vladislav say? “We don’t work for nothing, we need to make money. Let's make money! And the [intelligence] that the leadership is asking for, well, let’s give them what they want to hear.”
Among other things, Voronin persistently asked Kultanov to find a buyer for "fake dollars, forged documents, passports, seals" - and to find out "about the transfer of cryptocurrency." “As I understand it, there was some kind of stolen money - and it was necessary to find cards to withdraw them to Turkey, buy a crypt here on them and transfer it to Russia,” says Baurzhan. “Vladislav promised me a percentage.”
Another way of making money, which the FSB officers are trying to use, turned out to be contract killings.
“There are people who need to be removed”
Operative Voronin twice entrusted Kultanov with orders to kill people. “It was part of Vladislav's business,” Baurzhan says.
Once Voronin connected Kultanov with "an Afghan who wanted to order another Afghan living in Istanbul." “The customer gave me a photo , an address, and said that the person would have to be liquidated,” says Baurzhan. “He didn’t name [the victim], but he’s some big man: he was in the [Afghanistan] government, and then [after the Taliban took over] he fled to Turkey.”
Voronin entrusted negotiations on the price to his agent. “ Name a million dollars - then we will divide it,” Kultanov retells the instructions of the curator. “But when I announced this amount, the Afghan got lost: “I don’t have that kind of money.” So we didn't agree on anything."
Kultanov kept the Afghan phone number of the alleged customer and his VKontakte account . The owner of the page is called Payman, he is one of the sons of the former Afghan official Sahib Khan Asil Khan, who has long lived between Russia and Afghanistan.
MORE ABOUT HIS SONS
Sahib Khan Asil Khan was born in Kabul in 1959 , the year women were allowed not to wear the veil in a country ruled by the reformist monarch Zahir Shah . In 1978, Sahib Khan joined the ranks of the defenders of the April Revolution, which first brought the socialist government to power, and eventually caused the war and the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.
A pro-Soviet Afghan, Sahib studied first at the police academy in Kabul, and then at the Dzerzhinsky Higher Police School in Kiev. Returning to Afghanistan, he worked in the Ministry of Defense, in the political department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the state security agencies (the local analogue of the KGB). Asil Khan ended his career as a security officer in Afghanistan, already torn apart by civil war in the 1980s, as an assistant to the head of the main political department of the army.
In April 1992, the regime in Afghanistan was overthrown, and a new stage of civil war began - now between the groups of the victorious Mujahideen. Sahib Khan went first to Uzbekistan, then to Ufa, and in 2000 he settled in the Bashkir Tolbazy, where, having received citizenship, he went into the construction business and opened the Asil Khan shopping center .
For the next 20 years - until the seizure of power in the country by the Taliban - Sahib Khan regularly returned to his homeland, already as a co-founder of the Bashkortostan-Afghanistan Friendship Society. At the Russian representation in Kabul, Sahib Khan met with "Afghans interested in developing relations with Russia."
Watching his homeland (then occupied by US troops) with “pain in his heart” , the former political instructor repeated : “the Afghan people cannot imagine their future without the support of the great Russian people”, Putin is a “great boon ”, and “the West is constantly deceiving ” .
Meduza failed to get through to Sahib Khan. His son Paiman, in a conversation with a Meduza correspondent, was indignant: “What are you talking about, excuse me? Whom to kill for Afghanistan? (“For Afghanistan” is Payman’s wording; Meduza did not suggest this in their questions.) “I only contact the FSB when I land at the airport: they ask me who I am and where I went,” Payman added.
Andrei Soldatov , a Russian intelligence researcher, nevertheless notes in a conversation with Meduza that many members of the Afghan diaspora in Moscow have real ties to the FSB : their everyday difficulties (such as getting their son to go to university), and in return they traded their ties with the international diaspora.”
However, it did not come to an assassination attempt on the order of the alleged son of the former official. Having heard that a Russian agent was asking for a million dollars for the murder, Payman, according to Kultanov, did not get in touch again.
On another occasion, Baurzhan says, FSB officer Voronin instructed him to find and kill a certain "Karachay Ubaydulla." “Vladislav uploaded a photo of him and said, ‘Punch [address] — they’re offering good money for him,’” he recalls.
Kultanov provided Meduza with a copy of his correspondence with Voronin: the operative had indeed sent Baurzhan a photo of a curly-haired young man in a sports cap. On the table in front of Ubaidulla is a pink cocktail, and a machine gun hangs across his chest. However, the curator could not even specify the area of Istanbul where to look for the victim.
“Hell knows, [he] is like a ghost,” Voronin wrote to Kultanov. — [Need] at least some clues about him to know. Reliable. He was put on the wanted list there at the local [Turkish] Ministry of Internal Affairs. At least find out if he's really wanted or not."
Kultanov’s story about possible contract killings in Turkey does not contradict the data that is available on this topic in open sources: for example, two former FSB officers told investigators from the Dossier Center that it is often freelancers who are used to carry out elimination tasks. Turkish law enforcement agencies have repeatedly stated that intelligence agents were involved in the killings.
“Gushchin also told me, when we met in Astrakhan in his car, he said:“ You know how, you know - after Syria! You will be a killer,” Kultanov recalls a conversation with his first curator. “There are people who will have to be [removed]. And you will earn money, and you will help your homeland.
Baurzhan never committed a single murder commissioned by the FSB (as he himself claims).
* * *
On April 25, 2023, Kultanov was detained and taken to an immigration prison in the city of Nigde . The day before, he wrote to a Meduza correspondent: “I live on pins and needles. The visa expired a long time ago, the residence permit was not approved - I was illegal here. He contacted the police and even the special services. This time he told them everything as it is. Asked for asylum. They definitely didn’t forget about me: the spy himself came to surrender!”
His curators could not or did not want to help Baurzhan legalize in Turkey. On February 16, 2023, Kultanov also asked the migration service for asylum: mentioning that the FSB “threats” made a “spy” out of him, Baurzhan asks “not to extradite or deport”, otherwise he will be “killed in prison” .
Kultanov told a Meduza correspondent that after he crossed the Turkish border, he stopped working for the FSB, and in his correspondence with curators only pretended to collect intelligence. It is impossible to check this.
The last time a Meduza reporter spoke to the former militant was on May 10, when he was able to call from prison.
“I have a few minutes of communication on this payphone left,” Baurzhan hurries; loud laughter is heard, either from his guards or from his cellmates. “I’m in Nowhere—the guards say you can’t get through here. They don’t provide an interpreter, but every day they come and ask: “Do you want to be deported or not?” I say that I don’t want to.”
This cut off the connection.