On February 27, 2022, in a post on his Telegram channel, a Tunisian-born Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) cleric ‘commented on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call to foreigners to come to Ukraine to join its fight against the Russian Armed Forces in a special new unit, dubbed the “International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.”[1]
In his post, the cleric writes that the West is hypocritical, because, he contends, when a Muslim travels to another country to “defend the Islamic nations” the West designates him a terrorist and his family is persecuted, while it permits Europeans to travel to Ukraine to defend the country.[2]
The cleric has posted several recent comments about the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine and declared that rebels in Syria should take advantage of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine to make advances in Syria.[3]