28.08.2022.

How the Kremlin is winning the information war in the Middle East

A large number of users of mass media and social networks repeat pro-Russian stories about Ukraine in Arabic. It's often a lie, but why does it resonate with Middle Easterners?
"Dear Mr. Medvedev, every Russian victory gives us hope," wrote members of an Iraqi paramilitary group in an open letter to the former Russian president. "Russia is the sword of vengeance that brings justice to all those who suffered from the self-proclaimed masters of the world. Much of the world is waiting for the unconditional victory of Russia," Iraqis said on the Sabereen Telegram channel of Iraqi news and politics, which has a quarter of a million subscribers.
That someone outside of Russia is waiting for Russia to win a war against Ukraine may seem unlikely and even strange to the majority of Europeans and Americans who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, it is possible that many people in the Middle East agree with the authors of this letter.
A dangerous campaign
Everyone knows about Russian disinformation aimed at English-speaking audiences, Nadia Oveidat, a professor who studies digital activism in the Arab world, noted recently in an analysis for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
 "However, most people in the West do not realize that there is now an equally, if not more dangerous, propaganda campaign in the Arabic language that aims to distort the public's perception of Russia's war in Ukraine," Oveidat emphasized.
"The Russians are definitely winning the information war," Mahmoud al-Khitabi, a Syrian refugee now living in France, told DW.
"In Syria, all pro-regime people (supporters of the authoritarian government led by Bashar Assad. - Ed.) believe that the USA is firing missiles at Russia, and Russia is simply defending itself. Many people in Europe do not even realize that this (propaganda of the Russian Federation. - Regulation ) happens. There's a total blackout," Al-Khitabi said.
Russia "is not responsible"
It is not difficult to find examples of Russian propaganda in Arabic, researchers say. For example, there are many false reports in Arabic about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fleeing the country, how Russia protects civilians in war zones, and why the US and the EU are allegedly responsible for the global food crisis. The main - and false - narrative is always that Russia is not responsible for the war in Ukraine.
Some of these messages appear to be spread by Russian state media in Arabic, such as the propaganda broadcaster Russia Today, better known as RT. The US registered him as a "foreign agent" in 2017, and in March of this year, EU member states agreed to suspend all licenses for RT's local broadcasting due to "systematic manipulation of information and disinformation" that pose a threat to EU stability. But the Arabic channel RT did not experience any restrictions in its work.
Accurate data on RT's popularity among Arabic-speaking viewers is hard to come by, but it is generally ranked among the top five broadcasters in the region, alongside Al Jazeera, Al-Arabi and Sky News Arabia. It usually performs better than the offerings of Western media companies in the Arabic language.
The rise in popularity of RT
"In the last three months, RT Arabic has consistently outperformed its competitors," said Mustafa Ayad, Africa, Middle East and Asia director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London-based nonprofit that monitors online extremism.
"RT in Arabic often quotes other state agencies, such as the Syrian news agency SANA and China's CGTN in Arabic, Ayad told DW.
But far more important than any mass media that is clearly connected to the Russian state are pages on the social network Facebook and other online channels that have no formal ties to the Russian Federation, Ayad pointed out.
"The pro-Kremlin digital ecosystem in Arabic is a mix of official state media and unofficial branded media organizations," Ayad explained.
These are organizations that exist exclusively on social media platforms, they are usually not accredited news agencies, but they play a role in spreading pro-Kremlin content."
In the past, the ISD has even found social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers run by so-called "Kremlin hotties" - purportedly Russian women who post pro-Russian stories in Arabic. The accounts and photos are fake, but as ISD notes, "male audiences in the Middle East and North Africa are ready to consume them." Most of the accounts identified by ISD have since been suspended.
"That kind of supposedly unrelated users and media present on all social media platforms gets twice as much attention as any official media," says Ayad.
Why are lies attractive?
The narratives they present resonate with Middle Eastern audiences for several reasons.
One of them is indirect. Local populations in countries with authoritarian governments often distrust their own state media and rely more on news spread through social media. A study by the Washington-based Middle East Institute suggests that Russian media and their proxies are much more active on social media than Arabic-language media in the US or Europe. For example, RT Arabic publishes two to three times more posts than Al Jazeera or the BBC, the researchers found.
An old grudge against the West
There are also political and historical reasons. In a 2021 report for the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, analysts summarized the top 10 ways Russia has tried to influence international coverage of its foreign policy. This study was conducted in 2019, but recent ISD research suggests that some of the most commonly used tactics are now being applied to the war in Ukraine.

For example, one theme that attracts people from the Middle East is that Russia allegedly opposes "external interference in the country's sovereign affairs," according to a Marshall Center report.
The people of Iraq, where American and allied troops were introduced in 2003, can be drawn to this. The Sabereen Telegram channel, which published an open letter to Medvedev this weekend, is run by militant allies of Iran still outraged by the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.
Another popular theme is that Russia is supposedly advocating a multipolar world as opposed to a world dominated by Western interests. This resonates with countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which seek greater regional and global influence, are involved in conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and whose leaders have strong nationalist views.
Or, as the author of one of the pro-Russian Twitter accounts wrote, "not everyone wants to follow Uncle Sam's orders." Despite the fact that Russian foreign policy narratives are aimed at distorting reality, Marshall Center researcher Dmitry Horenburg explained that "one common thread that unites these narratives is that they all contain an element of truth at the core."
"Kremlin narratives have used Western hypocrisy and involvement in regional colonialism and regional conflicts as a means to highlight [what Russia sees as] the treacherous and duplicitous nature of Western support for Ukraine," Ayad explains.
"It's really about a protest," Yasser Abdel Aziz, a Cairo-based media analyst, told DW. "There is a large part of the Arab public that believes that the Western media is biased and that the West in general is prejudiced against Arabs and Islam. There is a lot of bitterness," he concluded, adding that Russia cunningly uses these feelings to pursue its interests.