Fact Checking the Arab Media

Almost as soon as AP reported on Sunday morning, April 10 - via an anonymous “senior US official”- that Russia had appointed General Alexander Dvornikov to command its military operations in Ukraine, the White House decided to go public, sending US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Press Secretary Jen Psaki for a round of interviews with US media to variously hit home the message that Dvornikov was, as Psaki charged in one interview on “Fox News Sunday,” “...responsible for the brutality and the atrocities we saw in Syria [and] that there’s going to be a continuation of what we’ve already seen on the ground in Ukraine,” in terms of “the atrocities.”

That same morning and then later in the evening, two major American news organizations, CNN and NBC News respectively, carried interviews with two different retired US military commanders who it appears were the first to prominently circulate the specific charge that Dvornikov was previously known as “The Butcher of Syria.” Although no US official had publicly used the term “butcher” in reference to Dvornikov’s relatively short tenure commanding Rusian forces in Syria from September 2015 to June 2016, Gen. David Petraeus on CNN’s “State of the Union” and Adm. James Stavridis on “NBC Nightly News” both asserted that it was essentially common parlance over the years to refer to Dvornikov as a “butcher” and that, moreover, he was responsible for the widely reported atrocities that occurred in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016 when Russian and Syrian regime forces battled rebels backed by Turkey and other states. “The general is known as the ‘butcher of Syria,’ retired Gen. David Petraeus said… ‘The Russians were known in Syria basically for - quote - ‘depopulating’ areas. That’s what they did to Aleppo.’” Later on NBC News, Stavridis asserted similarly that “Dvornikov is known as the ‘Butcher of Syria’... ‘He is the goon called in by Vladimir Putin to flatten cities like Aleppo in Syria.’”

In the days that followed, prominent news outlets across the Arab media sphere amplified the “butcher” tagline and Aleppo atrocity charges, in both Arabic and English, that had seemingly originated in the US media. The Qatari-owned, London Headquartered New Arab website on Monday, April 11 carried the same quotes by Stavridis in its story entitled: “Vladimirovich Dvornikov - Putin seeks help from the “Butcher of Syria” to resolve the war in Ukraine.” A day later, in its own profile of Dvornikov, the Qatari owned Al-Jazeera cited Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy chief of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces, as asserting that “He’s been called ‘butcher’ since the days of the Second Chechen War, then in Aleppo in Syria.”

However, as prominent Syria-analyst Aron Lund tweeted on April 11 in reference to the “butcher” tagline, “I’d certainly never heard it, and I can’t find a single instance of him being referred to by that name before his appointment in Ukraine.” In fact, as Lund pointed out on Twitter and in a subsequent interview with Arabmediafactcheck.org, it is “the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, who has been known as the ‘Butcher of Syria,’” by many Syrians as well as outside observers and actors.

Google searches in Arabic and English conducted by Arabmediafactcheck.org similarly found numerous references to Assad as “the Butcher of Syria” and Aleppo prior to US revelations about Dvornikov’s command in Ukraine, but none in regards to Dvornikov’s tenure in Syria.

Of course, the absence of such a tagline doesn’t exonerate Dvornikov’s conduct while he was in charge of Russian forces in Syria. It can, however, make it seem - erroneously - as though Dvornikov was somehow a unique or different figure amongst Russian commanders. As the Insitute for the Study of War argued in a detailed report on April 11:

Indeed, when it comes to war crimes allegations, there are some reliable reports pertaining to the period from September 2015 - when Russian forces first overtly and massively intervened in Syria under Dvornikov - to the very end of June 2016 when he transferred command to Zhuravlev. As one example, from August 2015 to August 2016 i.e. the first year of Russian bombardments, the group Physicians for Humanity recorded the same number of attacks on hospitals or medical facilities as it had the previous year - a staggering 110 such attacks.

Still, the most compelling war crimes allegations and findings involving Russia pertain to the period after Dvornikov actually left Syria. The encirclement of and battle over rebel-held east Aleppo in particular, an engagement that began, according to Reuters, on July 27, 2016, is widely cited as providing evidence of numerous Russian atrocities. By this time, however, Zhuravlev had already been in charge for four weeks. His leadership of Russian forces during the subsequent fall of East Aleppo in December was decried by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who, while also accusing rebels of war crimes, deemed Russian actions as

“crimes of historic proportions.”

By March 2020, the UN had further concluded via its Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria that Russia was directly involved in war crimes for indiscriminate bombing of two civilian areas at least during 2019.

Fact Check Assessment: Partially False

Although Dvornikov led the initial Russian intervention in Syria in the Fall of 2015 and is accused by some organizations of war crimes during his short tenure, he was not previously known as the “Butcher of Syria” or Aleppo even if some believe the title is completely appropriate for him and/or his Russian successors. In any event, for many Syrians, the ignominious title of butcher will probably always fall squarely on their fellow countryman, Bashar al-Assad.