Putin at Valdai 2014: His Claims About Who Armed ISIS, in Context

In October 2014, at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Vladimir Putin answered a question about the Islamic State by blaming Washington. In his telling, the United States and its partners had armed Syrian rebels, many of those fighters later switched to ISIS with their weapons, and America's allies were buying the group's oil. The short clip below became popular a year later, just as Russian jets began bombing in Syria.

The clip is worth watching, but it is a political argument, not proof of who "created" ISIS. Some of what Putin said has support in later research; much of it does not, and some of it fits poorly with what Russia itself went on to do. This guide sets out what he said, where the group really came from, and what investigators found about weapons and oil.

What Putin said at Valdai in October 2014

The Valdai Discussion Club is a Moscow-based forum, founded in 2004, where the Russian president meets foreign academics and journalists once a year. The 2014 session ran from 22 to 24 October in Sochi under the theme "The World Order: New Rules or a Game Without Rules". It came a few months after Russia annexed Crimea, and Putin's main speech was a sharp attack on American foreign policy.

Asked about the ISIS problem, he first said he did not regard the United States as a threat to Russia. Then he turned the question around. "Well who on earth armed them?" he asked, according to the English translation in the video, and pointed to the countries that had pushed weapons into Syria to help rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad.

His argument ran in three steps. First, many fighters in Syria were, in his words, paid mercenaries: "Mercenaries fight for whichever side pays more." Second, when ISIS offered better pay, rebels changed sides and took Western-supplied weapons and captured oil fields with them. Third, the buyers of that oil were known, and Washington's allies were among them, yet nobody imposed sanctions. He dismissed this as amateurish policy-making and asked, in the translation, "Can they not think a step ahead?"

Where ISIS actually came from

The group's roots go back well before the Syrian uprising and before any Western programme to arm rebels. According to the Wilson Center's timeline, ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the network the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi built in 2004 during the insurgency that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq.

After Zarqawi's death the network rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006. It was badly weakened by the 2007 troop surge and the Sunni tribal "Awakening", but it never vanished. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over in 2010. When Syria fell into civil war from 2011, the group sent fighters across the border, then in 2013 renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In June 2014 it captured Mosul and Tikrit, and Baghdadi declared a "caliphate". At its peak it held about a third of Syria and some 40 percent of Iraq.

So the basic chronology matters. The organisation existed for close to a decade before US-backed rebels in Syria received any significant arms. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, the dismantling of the Iraqi army and sectarian politics in Baghdad are usually seen by historians as far more important in creating ISIS than weapons deliveries in Syria.

Did US-backed weapons reach ISIS?

Here Putin was pointing at something real, even if he overstated it. From 2013 the CIA ran a covert programme, later reported under the code name Timber Sycamore, to train and arm vetted Syrian rebels from bases in Jordan. Saudi Arabia supplied much of the money, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey had already shipped rifles and machine guns to rebel groups in 2012.

Leakage happened. Reporting cited on the programme's history describes US-supplied weapons captured by the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, rebels selling arms to traders who passed some to ISIS, and Jordanian intelligence officers allegedly reselling weapons on the black market. In 2017, Conflict Armament Research, which traces weapons recovered on the battlefield, reported that outside support for anti-Assad rebels had significantly increased the quantity and quality of arms available to ISIS. It documented anti-tank missiles bought by the United States that ended up with the group within two months of leaving the factory.

That is a serious finding, and it supports the general criticism that pouring weapons into a chaotic civil war is dangerous. It does not show that the United States set out to build ISIS, and the same research found no case of arms given to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces reaching the group. Much of ISIS's arsenal also came from Iraqi and Syrian army stocks it overran, including at Mosul. President Trump ended the rebel programme in July 2017.

The oil question: who bought ISIS oil?

Oil was ISIS's best-known income stream in 2014 and 2015. Putin said in Sochi that Washington's allies were buying it. After Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 on 24 November 2015, Moscow went further and accused Turkey, and even President Erdoğan's family, of profiting from the trade; Erdoğan's son denied it.

US officials gave a different picture. Speaking at Chatham House in December 2015, Adam Szubin of the US Treasury said ISIS had earned more than $500 million from oil, and that the far greater share ended up in areas controlled by the Assad government, with smaller amounts used internally, sold to Kurdish areas or smuggled into Turkey. In other words, smuggling into Turkey was real, but Russia's own ally in Damascus was described as the largest buyer. Neither government's account should be taken on trust alone, and both were making political points at the time.

Why the argument mattered in 2015

The clip spread in October 2015 because Russia had just entered the war. Its air campaign began on 30 September 2015 with strikes around Homs and Hama, presented as a fight against terrorism. A few days earlier, at the UN General Assembly, Putin had asked Western leaders whether they realised what they had done in the Middle East.

The Valdai remarks gave that intervention a ready-made justification: if Washington had armed the jihadists, Russia was cleaning up the mess. Yet according to later analyses, most Russian strikes in 2015 and 2016 hit rebel groups other than ISIS, including some of the same forces the United States backed, and helped keep Assad in power. In his Valdai answer Putin said outsiders should back a moderate, democratic Syrian opposition; in practice, Russian bombing did much to destroy it.

Common myths about ISIS's origins

"The US created ISIS." The group was founded as al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 and fought US troops for years. American mistakes, from the Iraq invasion to careless arming in Syria, helped it grow, which is a different claim from creating it.
"ISIS was just mercenaries." Some fighters did move between groups for pay, but ISIS was driven by a clear ideology, drew tens of thousands of foreign volunteers and ran a brutal administration over millions of people.
"Only Western allies bought its oil." US Treasury officials said most of it reached Assad-held areas, with traders and smugglers of many kinds involved.
"Russia came to Syria only to fight ISIS." Russia's stated goal also included stabilising the Syrian government, and its targeting reflected that.

How to read clips like this

A viral video of a head of state can be accurate in part and still mislead. A few habits help. Check the date and the political moment: who benefits if the claim spreads now? Separate the verifiable pieces, such as weapons leakage, from the sweeping conclusions. Look for independent work, such as weapons-tracing studies or court and Treasury findings, rather than relying on any government's word.

Putin's question about who armed Syria's rebels was fair, and later evidence showed that some weapons did reach jihadists. His wider claim, that Washington is mainly to blame for ISIS, ignores the group's Iraqi roots, the role of the Assad regime and Russia's own part in the war. ISIS lost its last territory at Baghouz in March 2019, and Baghdadi was killed in a US raid that October, but the arguments over who fed the fire continue.

Sources: Wilson Center: Timeline of the rise, spread and fall of the Islamic State; Wikipedia: Valdai Discussion Club; Wikipedia: Timber Sycamore; Reuters via YaleGlobal: Islamic State oil is going to Assad, some to Turkey, US official says; Wikipedia: Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war. Video first shared by True Activist.

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