“A senior general in the international fight against ISIS has a pointed warning for Western governments with troops in Iraq and Syria: You’re being played by the Russians. The Russian and Syrian regimes are mounting ‘extremely aggressive’ information operations, spreading disinformation and distorted narratives on social media in a bid to shape the strategic landscape as the ISIS fight comes to a close, said UK Army Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney, who just finished a year as deputy commander of Operation Inherent Resolve. Gedney cited staged photos of Russian soldiers providing humanitarian aid and carefully placed images of Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Entire ‘military operations [are] being conducted for the sole reason of getting the picture or the footage those people wanted,’ he said, and the misleading images are being circulated far more effectively than the American-led coalition can counter them. ‘The Russians are really good at this. Better than us,’ Gedney said Monday at the annual convention of the Association of the U.S. Army. ‘We saw a very clever, assiduous information campaign aimed at discrediting the campaign of the coalition. And I would argue [that] in many of our nation’s capitals, we didn’t realize we were being played.’”
Source: Russia is Winning the Information War in Iraq and Syria: UK General – Defense One
