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For some time now, Russia has been trying to link Ukraine and the West with jihadists in its narrative, in order to accuse them of supporting terrorism. In doing so, Russia relies on the mechanism described in Vladimir Volkoff’s theory of disinformation, exploiting the poor knowledge of a large part of Western public opinion about the Middle East and its fully justified negative assessment of Russia’s role. The idea is to use the critical attitude towards Russia to propagate a narrative that seemingly attacks Russia (“Russia is losing”), but in fact supports the Russian narrative (“Russia is defending Syria from jihadists supported by Ukraine and the West” – the main theme of the Russian narrative). The target group of this message is both residents of the Middle East and Europeans. In doing so, Russia uses the naive and ignorant image of jihadists, widespread in the West, as alleged fighters for the freedom of Syria, whose fight is part of stopping Russian imperialism. On November 29, 2024, the Arabic-language account @mog_Russ on the X.com portal, which is one of the main tools of Russian disinformation on this portal, aimed at the Arabic-speaking population (498.5 thousand followers), published an “analysis” of the alleged links between the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham offensive and Ukraine. The main topic was stated there in the first of 15 tweets as “The United States, Israel, and Ukraine are leading the new conflict in Syria.” The addition of Israel is intended to exploit the negative perception of this country in the Arab-Muslim world, resulting from Israel’s actions in Palestine and Lebanon. Russian propaganda has been trying to attribute responsibility for the civilian casualties of this war to the so-called “collective West.” The aim of these actions is to provoke hostility among hundreds of millions of Arab Muslims towards Europe and to lead to riots by activating this hostility in Arab-Muslim communities living in Europe. This is therefore a classic element of hybrid warfare.

@mog_Russ’s narrative is built on manipulated photos, their montages, and absurd interpretations of some photos. For example, the ties of jihadists to Ukraine are supposedly evidenced by the fact that some of them have yellow headbands, while others have blue ones. This is supposedly evidence of the participation of “Ukrainian drone operators” in the offensive on Aleppo. The next photo shows a group of men, one of whom has an ISIS patch. Although this is probably a photomontage and it is not known where the photo was taken, the thread states that these are “anti-Russian Chechen militias fighting in Ukraine”, for which there is no evidence. This, however, leads to another manipulation, i.e. linking this photo to recordings of people with ISIS patches in Aleppo and stating that jihadists in Syria were wearing both yellow and blue stripes (in reality, no one in the photos is wearing yellow and blue markings, only multi-colored armbands, including yellow or blue, but not yellow and blue) and ISIS markings (here, too, the authenticity is questionable because HTS originates from Al Qaeda and has never used ISIS symbols – ISIS uses a black flag with the Arabic inscription “There is no god but Allah” and the words “Allah, the prophet, Mohammad”, while Al Qaeda uses a white flag with the calligraphy of Shahada). Here, there is a direct suggestion that this is supposedly an implementation of Zelensky’s policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, which is supposed to mean that he perceives ISIS as a friend.

The subsequent photos deepen this manipulation in a very suggestive way, but in reality not based on any logical chain of evidence. The photo of a group of jihadists, again taken unknown where, suggests that extremists from all over the world are fighting on the side of the jihadists in Syria (which is partly true), but this is supposed to lead to the conclusion (it is unknown on what basis) that the same is true in Ukraine. The manipulation is complemented by a screenshot of an article from the English-language Kyiv Independent, suggesting the participation of Ukrainians in the Tuareg fights against the Wagnerians in Mali, which of course has nothing to do with Syria, but is supposed to lend credibility to the previous theses by psychologically affecting the recipient’s perception. Then Russian propagandists return to Syria and refer to a Kyiv Post video allegedly presenting the participation of Ukrainians in the fights in Syria, although in reality it is a montage of scenes of some attacks, from which it is completely unclear who, where and when they are depicted.

The next posts are devoted to Turkey’s alleged involvement in the HTS attack on Aleppo, which supposedly automatically implies US involvement, which is completely absurd, because the interests of Turkey and the US in Syria are not consistent and have been the subject of disputes between these countries many times. After which Russian propagandists return to Ukraine again, showing videos of the use of drones and stating that “it is obvious that drone operators trained or fought in Ukraine”. Nothing of the sort follows from the previous posts, but they created a psychological background for the recipient to believe it. The next posts intensify this impression by presenting alleged Syrian rebels with the flags of the Syrian revolution and Ukraine, and a screenshot of an article from Newsweek, which refers to an earlier article by the Kyiv Post about the presence of Ukrainians in Syria. This is supposed to give the impression that this “information” has been confirmed by various sources, when in reality it is not.

The whole thread is very suggestive, but it lacks any evidence of Ukraine’s participation in the fighting in Syria. Moreover, apart from the US-Turkey connection, there is no evidence of US involvement, which in fact considers HTS a terrorist organization and has offered a reward for the capture of its leader. Moreover, although Israel also appears in the first entry, it does not appear in the subsequent ones (the recipient forgets about it, but the Israel-jihadists-US-Ukraine connection remains in the subconscious). As you can see, Russian manipulation also refers to Ukrainian sources (Kyiv Independent, Kyiv Post) and international sources (Newsweek) to lend credibility to its narrative. The mechanisms of brackets and resonance boxes from Volkoff’s theory were used here. The brackets are information about the alleged involvement of the Ukrainian HUR (military intelligence) in the fight against Russia on various fronts around the world, while the resonance boxes are the media and people who, usually in good faith, spread this information. Two motivations of “resonance boxes” are used here. On the one hand, some Ukrainian media want to use this method to promote the “success propaganda” of Ukraine as a country with enormous potential, capable of opposing Russia on various fronts around the world. On the other hand, this results from the aforementioned naive approach that the fight against Assad in Syria is part of the global fight against Russia, without realizing that such a narrative allows Russian propaganda to link the West and Ukraine with jihadist terrorism. This serves to lend credibility to the Russian narrative not only in relation to Syria but also to other events, such as the suggestion that Ukrainians and the West were behind the terrorist attack by the Islamic State – Vilayet Khorasan on Crocus City Hall in March 2024. There is also no doubt that if new jihadist terrorist attacks occur in Europe, Russia will link them to Ukraine’s alleged involvement in Syria in order to fuel anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian sentiments.

Author: Witold Repetowicz

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A public task financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the frame of “Public Diplomacy 2024-2025: The European Dimension and Countering Disinformation” contest

The publication expresses only the views of the author and cannot be identified with the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.