Syrians assist Ukrainians in wartime alliances

NICOSIA: Syrians are mobilising to aid Ukrainians, sharing hard-won skills gained through years of conflict with Russian forces, such as surviving shelling, assisting refugees, and responding to chemical assaults.

Both Ukrainians and Syrians are seeking accountability for the atrocities perpetrated by Russian soldiers in their nations, and they sense the formation of an unbreakable relationship between them.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power appeared to be hanging by a thread following the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, until Russian forces intervened four years later, reversing the conflict’s outcome.

“From our experiences in Syria, we might be among those most able of understanding the pain of the people of Ukraine,” said Raed al-Saleh, head of the Syria Civil Defence force, known as the White Helmets.

“Syrians have lived the shelling, killing, and displacement brought on them by Russian forces.

“The time and place have changed, but the victim is the same — civilians — and the killer is the same — the Russian regime,” he told AFP.

Throughout Syria’s conflict, which has claimed over 500,000 lives, the White Helmets have acted as first responders, rescuing thousands from the rubble of homes shelled by Russian and regime forces in rebel-held areas of the country.

The fate of Ukraine’s besieged southeastern port of Mariupol, which has been subjected to some of Moscow’s most ferocious assaults, has drawn comparisons to the eastern districts of Aleppo, Syria’s northwestern city.

In 2016, air attacks destroyed the former rebel stronghold following a months-long siege.

“Look at the city of Mariupol. This is exactly what we’ve seen in the city of Aleppo in Syria,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last month at an international gathering.

He wished to convey the message that “‘Russia has always been a bad actor, Aleppo is proof of that, and now it is our turn to suffer,'” Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told AFP.

‘We forewarned you’

This common agony has sparked a number of projects.

A coalition of organisations formed the Syria Ukraine Network (SUN), which has facilitated the movement of Syrian doctors to Ukraine, according to coordinator Olga Lautman, a Ukrainian resident in Washington.

“We will be coordinating (with) Syrian experts on war crimes documentation and chemical attacks,” Lautman told AFP.

It sprang from “Syrians’ desire to use their skills to assist,” she explained, referring to the “connection” emerging between the two peoples.

Doctors at the Academy of Health Sciences in northwestern Idlib, one of Syria’s last remaining rebel strongholds, are training Ukrainian doctors and nurses online, the academy’s president Abdullah Abdulaziz Alhaji said.

Ukrainians are mostly interested in learning about chemical assaults, he explained. “They want to benefit from our experience.”

Although no chemical weapons usage has been proven in Ukraine, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reports that chlorine or sulphur gas strikes occurred during the Syrian conflict.

Additionally, White Helmets rescuers are making instructional movies for Ukrainians on how to treat wounded.

Syrian Omar Alshakal, creator of the Refugee4Refugees group, has been supporting Ukrainians fleeing fighting on the Ukrainian-Romanian border.

And Ukrainian and Syrian activists will launch a “Freedom and Justice Convoy” from Paris to the Ukrainian-Polish border to show the “Syrian people’s solidarity”.

“Syrians are keen to embrace the cause of Ukraine because it helps revive fading international attention to their own tragedy and to tell Westerners: ‘We warned you but you preferred to look away’,” said Hokayem.

 ‘Responsibility’

The Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister noted that Syrian activists have “sought to ride this wave of anti-Russian sentiment, to bolster the Syrian cause, but also to foster new, meaningful geopolitical relationships in Ukraine.”

On the margins of international gatherings, Syrian opposition leaders met Ukrainian leaders, and “their shared experiences have been clear cause for unity,” he told AFP.

For both, the most pressing question is whether Moscow – and in Syria, the Kremlin-backed President Assad – will ever face accountability.

“If Putin was held accountable for his crimes in Ukraine, this means that he will be held accountable for his crimes in Syria as well. But if Putin gets away with it, then the next crime will only be a matter of time,” said Saleh of the White Helmets.

Agnes Callamard of Amnesty International noted last month that the situation in Ukraine “is a repetition of what we have seen in Syria”.

Numerous commentators have drawn parallels between Russian tactics in Syria and Ukraine, ranging from targeting infrastructure to establishing so-called safe corridors and truces aimed at evacuating cities.

Moscow had demonstrated a “lack of moral principles” in its actions in Syria and Ukraine, according to Ivan Cherevychny, 71, a resident of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

He also chastised the United Nations and world leaders for their “irresponsible attitude” in the face of the two crises.

Others claimed that several commanders now leading the Russian invasion were involved in the Syrian war, citing Alexander Lapin and Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia’s forces in Syria in 2016.

“Russia used Syria as a training ground for testing the effectiveness of strikes against the residential, social, and economic infrastructure,” said a prominent Kyiv lawyer-turned-fighter who requested anonymity.

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