The September 2015 military intervention launched in Syria by Vladimir Putin at the invitation of Bashar al-Asad marked Russia’s tangible return to the Middle East and initiated a 180-degree turn in the course of the ongoing war. Four years after the beginning of the Syrian revolution, its repression, and its escalation into war, Moscow’s military involvement became a testing ground for Russian martial strategies, including “nonmilitary” measures and communication strategies. By exploring both textual and visual content posted on social media by Russian war reporters deployed in Syria between September 2015 and January 2020, in this essay I seek to highlight the ties between the embedded narratives around the on-site military intervention for Russian-speaking audiences, and the longstanding Russian Orientalist fascination with the Middle East.

The 2015 context in Russia was one of censorship, information control, and backlash against civil liberties. For Russian policymakers, the intervention in Syria offered new communication opportunities to boost Putin’s image both inside and outside the country, legitimise his continued rule, and highlight Russia’s competence in the international arena as an alternative to a diplomatically failing West.Footnote ¹ Indeed, during the Arab Spring, Russia began publicly focusing on an information war. In 2013, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, published an article on the “new rules of war,” suggesting that Russia could “break the coherence of the enemy” through “non-military measures.” The growing role of “new information technology” was stressed.Footnote ²

Russia’s information warfare targeted different audiences through complex channels of diffusion. International Relations and communication researchers have produced important work on the way Russia shaped and spread messages to international audiences: foreign citizens, politicians, and even heads of state. However, the discourse addressed to Russian citizens and Russian-speaking post-Soviet audiences also offers significant keys to understanding how the Russian state wanted to be perceived by its citizens, what rhetorical strategies it used, and what it aimed to achieve.

This discourse built on lessons learned during previous episodes of conflict, including Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014, when Russian media campaigns focused on influencing domestic public opinion.Footnote ³ It also continued Russia’s long tradition of instrumentalising the global phenomenon of radical Islam and jihadism while “imprinting” it with Soviet sociocultural elements.Footnote ⁴ For instance, it recalled the way Russian politicians sought to discredit Chechen combatants during the second Chechen war (1999–2009).Footnote ⁵ These strategies had helped bring Putin his first burst of popularity, when Russian citizens after the 2009 victory in Chechnya broadly endorsed the brutal military campaign he had orchestrated.Footnote ⁶ A parallel instrumentalisation would reshape public memory of the Cold War and World War II (called the Great Patriotic War in Russia); researchers have observed that Putin, “by making the war a personal event and a sacred one, created a myth and a ritual that elevates him personally, uniting Russia (at least theoretically) and showing him as the natural hero-leader, the warrior who is personally associated with defending the Motherland.”Footnote ⁷

The conflict in Syria is thought to have reactivated a long chain of collective memories and traumas for Russians. Poll data have shown a growing fear of a third world war. In October 2016, 48 percent of the population saw a world war as a “big danger” or “potential danger”; this number reached 57 percent in April 2018. For sociologist Stepan Goncharov, such fears were a direct “consequence of the intensification of the conflict in Syria, in the form in which it is reflected in the media.”Footnote ⁸ However, many Russians still perceived a military adventure in the Levant as “foreign,” unlike other operations “at home” or in the “near abroad.” Therefore, media reports from the ground needed not only to convey a smooth image of Russian forces, but also to strengthen the narrative of a preexisting historical bond justifying mutual loyalty between Russia and Syria.

Such concepts reached people on TV and other media outlets, but also on social media platforms. Particularly important was the Russian-language platform VKontakte (InContact), thanks to the growing presence of Russian embedded journalists (voennie korrespondenty, or voenkor) who were deployed in Aleppo and communicated daily to their followers through posts which were then amplified by many groups focused on the war. As Putin leapt to the rescue of his long-term ally al-Asad, Russian voenkors were granted full access to Syrian territory, even as other reporters were shut out. Local journalists from the opposition were hunted, arrested, or killed, and foreign journalists were denied visas, attacked, and killed.Footnote ⁹ Day by day, Russian war correspondents worked to undermine the stories of the Syrian revolution by favoring a pro-Asad version of the conflict in Syria to Russian media outlets, including Komsomolskaya Pravda (Komsomol Truth), REN TV, VGTRK, RT, and Russia-24. A new outlet based in Abkhazia, ANNA News, was founded in 2011. Although small, ANNA News played a key role in the coverage of the conflict thanks to its proactive stance, described by its founder Marat Musin as aiming to “counter the advanced information technologies that are used by al-Qaida to make insurgents in the Middle East look like freedom fighters.”Footnote ¹⁰ ANNA News’s numerous raw videos showed the front line, devastated cities, and weaponry, catching the attention of both Russian and international Internet users.

Studying the voenkors’ dual activity—both their official media dispatches and their social media activity—reveals what was shown of Syria, and what was eventually minimized or silenced. To explore this question, I collected 5,448 posts and 8,147 pictures shared by nine journalists between 2015 and 2020 on Vkontakte. To help analyse this vast corpus, I decided to mobilise tools of “textometry,” a discipline using “linguistically significant and mathematically based calculation for renewed analysis of text collections: syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations, contrasts and characterisations, evolutions.”Footnote ¹¹ By analysing the social media posts through recurring terms, co-occurrences, and word progression, I was able to underline the presence of lexical fields (topics, but also ideological tendencies) at the heart of the frames promoted by the war correspondents. I also used MAXQDA, a software supporting computer-assisted content analysis, to explore the 8,147 pictures. I inductively defined 23 codes manually, with each of them corresponding to a recurring element in the pictures, and later adjusted them deductively. This revealed the presence, for example, of 258 pictures of Palmyra (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. “Timokha the cat in Palmyra,” post by Oleg Blokhin, 19 May 2019.

My hypothesis was that Russia was implementing what I named the “up-bottom-up” strategy, that is, implanting a Kremlin-framed strategic “tale” of the war on the ground, and then having Russian political representatives react to it. However, this “tale” was being disseminated by journalists who were themselves Russian citizens shaped by Russian culture, filtering what they saw through their own understanding of the Arab world. Before delving into the voenkors’ discourse, I observed the journalists’ profiles and the relationship with the government that their professional activities revealed. Their work grows out of a strong tradition of voenkor rooted in the Russian empire and the USSR, whose mission was to inform society and shape public opinion while respecting the confidentiality of the armed forces.Footnote ¹² However, just like other media professionals, their work has been deeply affected by Putin’s tight grip on the media sphere, which has forced reporters into an extreme dependence on the Ministry of Defense incompatible with the fundamental ethics and standards of war journalism.

Voenkors are all men, of different ages; some are experienced public figures, while others are young and unknown. They are all acquainted with each other and work in teams. Their work is co-opted through governmental prizes and honors, and some are closer to the Kremlin than others. More importantly, they cultivate an ambiguous status, often seeming to be actively participating in the operations: they film themselves testing weapons and wearing military uniforms, embed themselves with pro-Asad militias, defend pro-war positions, and receive military (not journalistic) decorations in reward, including the “Participant of the Military Mission in Syria” medal. The ambiguities also concern their touristic activities. Are the pictures of monuments taken during their periods of rest? Are they taken during their working time? Do they represent their personal views, or are they part of the official communication line that they support?

Indeed, voenkors have two main ways to communicate, through the content they produce for various media outlets, and through their social media activity. On Vkontakte, their ability to blur the lines between professional content and personal storytelling is one of the most striking elements of communication. As their profiles and degree of experience vary, one cannot help but wonder where they draw the line between professional strategy, genuine curiosity about the country, and need for social contact. As weeks go by, readers follow them through their daily life on the ground, discovering all sorts of aspects of the war. Moreover, audiences come upon elements that they might not have expected. Far from the battlefields, the weaponry, the chemical attacks, the destruction, and the extreme violence, voenkors share their impressions regarding a country that they are discovering. With apparent candor, they mobilise common cultural references and maintain an impression of familiarity with readers, who sometimes describe them as “nashi” (ours). In 2017, the recurring use of the expression “barmaley” to describe terrorists in Palmyra with humor was striking; Barmaley is a fictional character who first appeared in 1925 in the USSR, described as an African cannibal bandit and pirate eating children in a poem by Korney Chukovsky (1882–1969). Photographing the fortress of Arvad Island, close to Tartus, a journalist jokingly describes a lion carved in its wall as belonging to “Lukomorye,” a fictional folkloric land evoked by Pushkin in his 1820 poem “Ruslan and Ludmila.” If their tone creates a form of intimacy with readers, it also reveals a human need to remain in contact with their world. The familiarity also is sustained by the central presence of journalists in the visuals, showcasing themselves and personifying the information. The following post was written in August 2016 to describe the city of Aleppo (Fig. 2):

Figure 2. “Sunset in Aleppo,” post by Leonid Kit, 13 August 2016.

At the time, the city was the scene of violent warfare between the regime’s forces and militias. Al-Asad and his allies had besieged the eastern part of the city since July, a siege described by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic as “brutal and reminiscent of medieval warfare.”Footnote ¹³ Amid the voenkors’ daily coverage of the violence and the military operations, this post, like a page in a personal diary, embellished by a picture depicting minarets at sunset, described Aleppo as an exotic “oriental fairy tale” with narrow streets, living by the rhythm of Islamic life. The author focused on the intense experience that the communion of sounds provoked in him, adding a mystical innuendo characteristic of an Orientalist reading grid. Three central ideas are highlighted. First, the depicted scene is as beautiful as it is peculiar, underlining the difference and the “otherness” of Aleppo, in comparison to Russian, and Christian, landmarks. Yet, the vision is somehow irresistible, just like a powerful charm. Second, the war is an inevitable fatality that we, as humans, endure. Third, the ongoing violence is temporary, and the situation will go back to “normal” in the ancient and eternal exotic city, as al-Asad’s authority will be restored.

This post is one of many, as voenkors specifically share a significant number of images of tourist attractions, including the six Syrian UNESCO sites. These photographs are apparently taken during their rest days, but also during military operations; the troops on the road can apparently accommodate quick visits and photo sessions of tourist sites. Readers might expect major sites such as Aleppo, Damascus, and Palmyra, but they also find surprising images of Bosra Amphitheater, the “valley of the dead cities,” and the Krak des chevaliers fortress, or Qal`at Salah al-Din. Other posts in this sightseeing genre include all sorts of destinations: archaeological sites, good spots for hikes, beaches, luxurious hotels, and so on. They offer a striking contrast with the visuals depicting military operations, destruction, accidents, explosions, and graphic violence.

In particular, pictures of destruction reveal the presence of massive fields of ruins in Aleppo, Homs, Deir-ez-Zor, Damascus, and “al-Yarmouk camp”, the Palestinian district of Damascus (Fig. 3). Although the impact that the alternation between visuals of desolation and unexpected beauty has on readers cannot be quantified, the work of Luc Boltanski on “the spectacle of distant suffering” gives us clues: when confronted by instantaneous images of war, affective engagements rooted in pity can be expected in “far-away others.”Footnote ¹⁴ Boltanski’s work can be put into dialogue with “terror management theory,” which contends that the existential terror generated by human awareness of the inevitability of death can be managed through the creation of cultural worldviews; scenes of massive destruction, on the contrary, are reminders of mortality that can trigger strong negative responses, including hostility, derogation, and physical aggression toward those who threaten one’s culture and worldview.Footnote ¹⁵

Figure 3. War correspondent Evgeny Poddubny, posing in the ruins of al-Yarmouk camp, in a suburb of Damascus, 24 May 2018.

Therefore, visuals of beauty juxtaposed amid images of severe violence can help get audiences emotionally involved and arouse their instinct to protect the Syrian people and its cultural heritage against “barbarism,” especially when journalists regularly emphasise the existing bond between Russia and Syria (Fig. 4). These posts echo the Russian state’s strategic use of heritage sites, such as its pompous organisation of the May 2016 concert by the Mariinsky Orchestra at Palmyra after the site’s reconquest from the Islamic State organization.Footnote ¹⁶ The Russian state and media’s framing of Palmyra after ISIS reveals an attempt to harness the presumed power of Syria’s ancient sites in the Russian imagination. These new images mobilise 18th- and 19th-century Orientalist readings of the region. For instance, in 1793, Saint Petersburg, the new city soon to compete with Moscow for the title of “third Rome,” would be called the “Palmyra of the North.”Footnote ¹⁷ Classical Russian poetry took up this expression when it came to “imagining” Saint Petersburg, presenting the city as “something extraordinary, striking the imagination, even fantastic,” yet “expressing something really existing, truly and deeply Russian.”Footnote ¹⁸ During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russian intellectuals and statesmen developed an increasingly keen interest in the Levant, focused on its politics, religious significance, and archaeology. Although the Holy Land remained the most visited destination, some travelers, including Dmitrii Dashkov, Osip Senkovskii, Avraam Norov, Bishop Porfirii Uspenskii, and Vasilii Khitrovo, also visited Syria, publishing stories from their travels.Footnote ¹⁹ Contemporary Russian efforts to monopolize Syrian archaeological preservation and restoration, in particular through Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and UNESCO, build on this tradition.

Figure 4. “Good evening from Syria,” post by Oleg Blokhin, 10 September 2019.

The ethno-religious theme is another good example of all the complexities that the Russian official discourse must tackle when depicting Syria to Russian citizens, in messages carried by journalists whose words also are conditioned by their own cultural biases. The framing of Syria as a Christian state belonging to a “Christian East” echoes centuries of imperial messianism, Russian Orientology, and historical pan-Orthodox traditions currently reactivated by the Russian government. However, journalists’ communications also sometimes highlight peaceful cohabitation with Islam and ethno-religious minorities. That strategy can be linked with the 15 million inhabitants in Russia currently belonging to an ethnic group whose cultural background mostly refers to Islam, but is also is deeply rooted in the history of imperial Russia, which “emerged as a continental empire, and conquered huge territories inhabited by a whole plethora of non-Russia nationalities.”Footnote ²⁰ This leads to posts exploring Syria’s religious life through Christian celebrations and cult locations, but also other posts featuring popular imagery of mystical Oriental enchantment: journalists showcase pictures of mosques at dusk or churches at sunset, with captions ranging from religious Arabic expressions such as maktūb or insha’ Allāh, and denounce with fatalistic melancholia the “chaos of war”, the “incomprehensible Middle East”, and international politics.

This study is ongoing, but I hope this brief sketch of how voenkors frame the Syrian conflict for Russian audiences on social media may suggest some useful methods and materials for studying how centuries-old Russian structures of feeling are being mobilized through contemporary tools to influence popular attitudes and legitimise policy decisions about the Middle East.Footnote ²¹ Pictures of daily life on the Syrian battlefield on social media, which can be at first perceived as harmless, are borrowing the tropes of Russian Orientalism and pan-Orthodoxy, working to justify Russia’s internal censorship and external military intervention in the framework of a 21st-century war.