MOSCOW – A report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty details the increase in efforts by Islamic State (IS) to reach its significant Russian speaking audience.
Furat.info is an amalgamation of two
previous Russian language recruitment and propaganda outlets, FiSyria
and ShamToday, which both maintained websites and social media accounts.
They now redirect to Furat.
Hundreds of militants from former Soviet
Union countries are thought to be fighting for IS in Syria and Iraq.
Furat is thought to be controlled by Umar al-Shishani, an ethnic Chechen
Kist from Georgia, now director of IS military operations in Syria.
IS has not officially recognised Furat,
but analyst Aaron Y. Zelin from the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy describes it as an “unofficial official account”.
Although IS Russian recruitment used to be centred on the Caucasus region, there is evidence of increasing support in central Asian countries such as Tajikistan.
IS has posted photos of a ‘media centre’
in Mosul that appears to be charged chiefly with subtitling Arabic
videos into Russian, enabling not just the dissemination of its message
abroad, but also to the large Russian speaking contingent already with
the jihadists in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
It has also produced videos
in Russian, such as Unity Of The Mujahideen Of The Caucasus, which
include interviews with militants from the Caucasus, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan.
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