ISIS has a new enemy – Russia. Based on that country’s alliance with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, ISIS is threatening to ‘liberate Chechnya’ from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. One of the consequences of this is that Russia and the U.S. now have common cause in defeating a common enemy.

One year ago, the Obama administration and the Russians were in direct opposition with each other over Syria. Obama was being pressured to launch air strikes at Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin – who supports Assad – was exerting pressure from the other direction. Since then, the U.S. under Obama is increasingly being faced with the cold hard reality that it must side with Assad in any effort to defeat ISIS.

Today, as Obama dithers over what to do about ISIS in Syria, ISIS is now threatening Putin, saying that it will ‘liberate Chechnya’.

Via the Daily Mail:

Vladimir Putin was today directly and personally threatened by the Islamic State because of his close ties to Syrian leader Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

The chilling warning, delivered by a member of the terror group, puts the Kremlim leader on the same side as the West in holding back Muslim extremism.

But at the same time, he remains at loggerheads with the U.S. and Europe in the worst crisis since the Cold War.

In a video on Al-Arabiya TV channel, an ISIS rebel sits in the cockpit of a captured Russian-made fighter aircraft in the Tabak area of the Syrian province of Rakka.

A second fighter warns: ‘This message is addressed to you, oh Vladimir Putin. These are your aircraft which you sent to Bashar, and with the help of Allah we will send them back to you.

‘Remember this. And with the permission of Allah we will liberate Chechnya and all the Caucasus.

“The Islamic State exists and it will exist and it will expand with the help of Allah. Your throne is already shaking. It is in danger and it will collapse when we get to you. We are on the way with Allah’s permission.’

The threatening footage comes with Russian subtitles, but the voice of a Russian speaker can be heard too.

In the sequence, in which the Islamic warriors clamber over the Sukhoi fighter, they also threaten the Syrian dictator, branding him a ‘pig’ and vowing to ‘use these aircraft to get to you’.

The message of hate to Putin follows his strong support for Assad, without which he is likely to have been toppled.
Putin is also loathed by Islamic extremists and terror groups for crushing attempts to set up an Islamic state in Chechnya, and in other mainly Muslim regions of southern Russia such as Dagestan.

The Russian leader has long argued that the West has missed the danger of such extremist groups while criticising him for human rights abuses in his clampdown.

It is no coincidence that ISIS is invoking Checnya in its threats to Putin. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Beslan school massacre in southern Russia. That savage attack was carried out by Chechen terrorists.