Russia – the main ally of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad – not only sends troops and planes to the Middle East country where at least 500,000 have been murdered in the civil war that started in 2011.
The Kremlin is also enthusiastically exported vile anti-Ukrainian propaganda to Syria.
Pro-government Syrian Facebook groups often publish texts or pictures, blaming Ukraine for supporting jihadist groups. Anyone can find cartoons with two figures hugging, one of whom impersonates Ukraine and the other – ISIS or al-Qaeda. Or people can read articles about rebel training camps somewhere near Lviv or Kharkiv, with combatants aimed at overthrowing Assad.
These propaganda products are usually poorly made and contain many unsubstantiated or even conflicting facts.
But they are, nonetheless, working.
“We will join Russian troops in Ukraine as soon as our war will be over. I swear you, I’ll go there the same day we will win at home,” one weary, skinny soldier from the Assad army said as far back as the summer of 2014, when the government was launching its counter-offensive operation against rebel opponents in northern Syria. He asked not to reveal his identity for reasons of personal security. His comments came just as Russia launched its war in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow officially denied (and still denies) involvement of regular Russian forces in heavy fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, but even half-literate Syrian soldiers in their early 20s understand who is waging war in distant Ukraine. They not only understand, but many of them support it unconditionally.
“What’s the reason for me and my comrades to go to the foreign war and kill Ukrainians? Because Putin does it – he is killing them. And I don’t think Putin would kill nice people, only bad persons deserve such a fate. That’s why we will help him to fight off bad people not only at home,” said one of the Assad army’s privates.
Even before Russian planes and their crews arrived in the port city of Latakia in 2015 and Russia joined the Assad forces in long and bloody war against the rebels, Putin was glorified by state propaganda as one of the closest allies in the “Israeli- and US-backed rebellion aimed to overthrow the legal president,” as state media called it.
The reasons why Putin became an icon for pro-Assad Syrians (since 2012, his portraits even hang on the walls inside local shops and cafes in Latakia and other government-controlled regions) are clear and simple – money, weapons, diplomatic support.
Russia, just like the Soviet Union in previous decades, is the main supplier of military equipment and ammunition for Syrian government. Moscow invested billions of dollars in Syrian economy, first of all in oil sector. And it is also one of the very few international actors who are ready to defend Assad even when he is committing unforgettable crimes against his own citizens.
In return, Assad’s government has always been a strict supporter of all Russian escapades. Assad has supported Moscow’s right to militarily intervene in Georgia and occupy the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Russian forces since 2008. Almost the same was said by Syrian top authorities after the Kremlin’s seizure of Crimea and the start of the war in the eastern Donbas.
A member of the Russian military police and Syrian government forces patrol near the village al-Hamidia in the Syrian Golan Heights on August 14, 2018. (Photo by Andrei BORODULIN / AFP)
Since the 2014 relationship between Ukraine and Syria worsened almost every week.
Assad’s government recognizes Crimea as a part of Russia and welcomed all Russian actions “aiming to restore peace and order” in the neighboring country. In the autumn of 2018, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs even published the statement accusing Kyiv of sending weapons to jihadist groups, including ISIS.
The propaganda instilling hatred for Ukrainians is why the brainwashed youth of Syria want to fight Ukrainians.
But this hate is not directed at Ukrainian citizens living in war-torn Syria. There are only a few dozen people with Ukrainian passports who currently reside in Syria. Almost all of them are wives of Syrian men who studied or worked in Ukraine and who returned home before the war. It seems like they are also affected by media propaganda.
“I’m Ukrainian, but I think it will be better if Russia could take under its control all the east and south of Ukraine, including Odesa, where I was born,” said the Ukrainian wife of a Syrian man. The couple asked not to reveal their names to avoid the risk of being persecuted by the al-Assad regime.
She cooks borshcht and keeps a bottle of Ukrainian vodka around for special friends and occasions.
The woman, who lives with her husband and son in cozy flat close to the center of Damascus, believes in everything that Putin says and doesn’t trust Ukrainian authorities.
The small TV in her flat is always tuned into one of the Russian channels. Her husband works in one of Assad’ s ministries, where his main duty is to cooperate with Russian journalists and diplomats during their visits to Syria. Before 2014 he also worked with Ukrainians, but now as he says with a smile, he has deals primarily with only one Ukrainian citizen – his wife.
But the husband also has Ukrainian citizenship. And he got it legally after studying in school and one of the universities in Odesa. He came there in his childhood after his father was appointed as part of a group of Syrian specialists who were sent to the Soviet Union to maintain bilateral ties. His father was a fluent Russian speaker, but more important is the family’s status as Alawites.
The small religious minority identify their faith with the Shia branch of Islam despite a lot of borrowings from Christianity, Zoroastrianism and other beliefs. Because of this mix for centuries, Alawites were treated like apostates by their Muslim neighbors. As a result, even a few decades ago it was closed community, struggling for own survival with other communities and authorities. Followers made up only from 10 percent to no more than 20 percent of the Syrian population, which at one time numbered 18 million people.
But everything changed when Hafez Assad – father of the current president – concentrated all power in his hands after a military coup in 1970. Assad, an Alawite, quickly put his co-religionists almost on every leading position in his government and state-controlled industries. The young Alawi generation got the opportunity to study abroad, first of all, in Soviet universities and military schools.
One of the Alawites propelled by the coup from the poverty to well-paid and respected work was the husband of the Ukrainian woman from Odesa. He finished language and economy courses in Moscow and spent few years in Damascus before was sent to Odesa. During the 1970s and 1980s, Odesa was one of the main ports which connected Soviet Union and its Middle East allies.
Soviet exports – agricultural products, factory goods and, of course, weapons – came to Syria through seaports. And one of the persons, who organized and controlled these shipments obtaining for it a very good salary was the father-in-law of the Ukrainian woman.
Her husband, who was a teenager in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became an independent country, talks about the USSR with amazement.
“We had everything. You know – everything. Car, VCR, American jeans, Japanese stereo. All the things which were incredibly expensive in Syria and almost impossible to buy in the USSR. But my father bought it all for us. And after the U.S.S.R. broke up, his father lost his job because all the routes were redirected towards ports in Russia.
“It was a great loss not only for our family, but also for Ukraine,” he recalls.
A member of the Syrian government forces poses for a photo next to a Syrian flag in destroyed buildings at the entrance of the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk on the southern outskirts of Damascus on May 21, 2018, after the Syrian army announced it was in complete control of the capital and its outskirts for the first time since 2012, following the ousting of the Islamic State group from a last pocket of resistance (AFP)
He and his brother, who also spent his childhood and youth in Ukraine, believes that Putin is aiming to rebuild the Soviet Union – the country where they were rich and happy. In Muhktar’s view, the Soviet Union is much better than independent Ukraine.
“You saw what they did to our Odesa? They let Saudis build an Islamic center in the downtown. It is impossible to imagine – my family, which made so much for Ukraine, was forced to leave, because we cannot find jobs. And Saudis, who started the war in Syria, who massacre people in Yemen, they have their own center for spreading their barbaric views on Islam,” the brother said.
The brother runs his own consulting company in Damascus, but sometimes leaves the office to join some of the Russian journalists in a trip to the war front and help them with the translation and obtaining all the necessary papers. He says he’s not doing it for money, but because he really wants to help Russia.
“I’m not ashamed with my or my brother`s Ukrainian citizenship,” he said. ”But, to be honest, I’ll prefer to have a Russian passport.”
In defense of their pro-Kremlin views, the brothers say the same thing as the separatists in the Donbas and Crimea. They want to get back to Soviet Union times, which means, they want predictability with the government in charge of everything and guaranteed, although minimal, wages.
But as history showed in the Soviet Union, and may yet in Syria, such an anti-democratic state runs the ever-present risk of collapse.
