The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion For Russian TV, Syria isn’t just a foreign country — it’s a parallel universe

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March 13, 2017 at 4:29 p.m. EDT
A Syrian civil defense volunteer, from the group known as the White Helmets, holds the body of a child after he was pulled from the rubble following a government airstrike in Aleppo on Oct. 4, 2016. (Ameer Alhalabi/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad (@im_pulse) is a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling. He is writing a book on the war of narratives over Syria.

With the world relapsing into old rivalries, disinformation is emerging as the continuation of war by other means. Propaganda has always been used by authoritarian states to control populations at home — but technological advances are allowing them to also neutralize enemies abroad. None has been more aggressive and resourceful in this regard than Russia. And nowhere has this weaponized information been more lethal than in its coverage of Syria — vividly exemplified by RT, the Kremlin’s international broadcaster.