Russian TV airs fake video alleging Ukrainian involvement in terrorist attack, featuring Ukrainian official

If I understand it correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Russian interference in Syria has been exceptionally devastating for Isis in the region.

You’ve been given some decent answers here so I just want to know what prompts a person to not believe this news.

So ISIS actually owns up to an attack and you want to doubt them and think nah, smells like Ukraine. Like why?

You need motive and opportunity. There are not many opportunities to carry out attacks in Israel at present.

Maybe most people do not know about the relationship between the Russian Empire and Islam. Today, over 10% of the population is Muslim. When you think of soviet soldiers fighting Nazi Germany, you need to assume an even higher percentage of the conscripts being Muslim; state atheism notwithstanding. I know these things, and yet Islam is not something I intuitively associate with Russia.

During the European Middle Ages, vast areas of what is now in the south of the Russian Empire were converted to Islam. In later centuries, these areas were conquered by the expanding Russian Empire. It's not quite a happy relationship. You may have heard of the genocide of the Crimean Tatars, particularly under Stalin. During the Cold War, majority Muslim Turkey was the only NATO country to have a border with the Soviet Empire. Nuclear missiles were stationed at that border, until they were removed as part of the secret agreement that came out of the Cuba Crisis.

Afghanistan has a long border with the Russian Empire. In the 1980ies, the Soviet Union embarked on an ill-conceived intervention to aid an even more ill-conceived revolution in Afghanistan. After 10 years of war, the troops were pulled out. This was then followed by another decade of civil war, which may have been dying down leading up to 9/11.

When the Soviet Empire dissolved, many ethnic groups achieved independence. That was not always peaceful. The fighting in Afghanistan seems to have had a certain spillover effect. For whatever reason, the Russian Army fought to maintain imperial dominance over some of these territories. Chechnya was especially brutally fought over.

Multiple terror raids have taken place in the last 30 years.

Admitting it*

I spent an hour today trying to find a real source for this quote, often misattributed to Churchill. And failed. Found some sources saying it predates Churchill, but no direct references. Seems an adage that is quite old though.

Assuming they (ISIS) have active members on the other side, and a corridor established, fleeing into Ukraine would be probably significantly safer - assuming Russian and Ukrainian internal security services aren't sharing intelligence and otherwise cooperating while they're engaged in a hot conflict.