Islamic State has issued a video showing the beheading of what it described as a Russian FSB intelligence officer captured in Syria, the US-based SITE monitoring website reported on Tuesday.
The Russian Defence Ministry has denied that any Russian serviceman had been captured or killed by the Islamic State in Syria.
The 12-minute Russian-language video, released on the day Russia celebrates the anniversary of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany with military parades, showed the man dressed in a black jump suit kneeling in a desert scene and urging other Russian agents to surrender.
It is believed that the man killed in the video was Colonel Evgeny Petrenko, a captain in the second division of the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service, who lived in Moscow.
‘This idiot believed the promises of his state not to abandon him if he was captured,’ the man, believed to be a 38-year-old Russian spy operating in Syria, says in the recording, before a bearded man beheaded him with a knife.
The authenticity of the recording could not immediately be verified, nor was it clear when the killing occurred.
The knifeman in the video is believed to be Chechen.
‘One of my orders was to gain access to Omar al-Shishani or to his circle. But during this I was discovered and arrested by the security services of the caliphate,’ the man believed to be Petrenko says in the video, appearing to speak under duress.
Shishani was a Georgian Chechen commander for IS in Syria who was thought to have been killed last year.
The captive then calls on the Russian government to remove its troops from Syria.
ISIS first claimed to have captured Petrenko in September 2016, but called him a captain instead of a colonel at the time.
The Russian Defence Ministry has denied that the capture and beheading occurred.
‘All servicemen of the Russian armed force’s group in Syria are alive, well and are carrying out their duties in the fight against international terrorism,’ the ministry said.
It added: ‘We condemn the actions of certain media outlets that have been citing information hoaxes spread by international terrorist groups on a regular basis.’
Russian forces are backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels and militants seeking to oust him. The video showed scenes of what it described as the aftermath of Russian bombing raids in Syria.
The Russian defence ministry says about 30 Russian servicemen have been killed since the start of the Kremlin’s operation there in September 2015.
Source: ISIS claim they’ve beheaded Russian intelligence officer | Daily Mail Online
