Street art at the UN General Assembly, September 2013, portraying Syrian refugees looking on to Presidents Putin and Obama sitting at a table over a map of Syria. Art by Eduardo Relero. Photo by Oxfam. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Sergei Davidis is a Russian opposition politician and rights defender. He is a member of the council of Memorial Human Rights Center, and a member of the Federal Coordination Council of the 5th of December Party. SyriaUntold sat down with him to understand how Russian civil society positions itself on the Syrian conflict. This dialogue is the outcome of a partnership between SyriaUntold and openDemocracy Russia (oDR), and is republished here as part of Global Voices’ own partnership with SyriaUntold. SyriaUntold: Syrian civilians have been subjected to unprecedented violence for more than six years. Why is Russian civil society silent about it? Are there underreported solidarity initiatives? Davidis: I don’t think there are any particularly significant solidarity initiatives that the world doesn’t know about. Sometimes there are solitary pickets, sometimes there are slogans of solidarity at general opposition demonstrations — particularly those regarding Ukraine. After the Kremlin decided to deploy troops in Syria [in 2015], there was a demonstration against it [in Moscow], two to three thousand people attended. There was an attempt to hold a solidarity demonstration at the height of the storm of Aleppo in November 2016 — this had a certain resonance in society, but the city authorities didn’t allow it to go ahead. Back then, there were some protest actions in a few Russian cities, although they didn’t get much in the way of numbers. There’s some solidarity with the Syrian people on Russian social networks, but it’s quite quiet. The reasons why Russian society is silent on this issue are complex, and probably can’t be explained exhaustively. I suspect that the following factors are at play: – the coverage of the situation in Syria by media outlets under state control. If this coverage mentions violence against civilians, then it will be acts of violence committed by IS [also known as ISIS, Islamic State, or Daesh] or the [US-led] Coalition. Russia is presented as the defender of the civilian population; – the conflict in Syria doesn’t fit into the dichotomy of the battle between the democratic west and the autocratic Putin regime; – the general lack of information on the situation in Syria, and the complexity of this situation for Russian citizens — to figure out what is going on, especially on the basis of fragmentary and unbalanced information, and therefore understand who should be supported and why, is very difficult; – the Syrian context itself is culturally alien and incomprehensible for Russian citizens (in contrast to Ukraine), and the level of empathy for the Syrian people is low; – the threat of Islamic terrorism and, in first place, Islamic State, is seen as real, and the Russian public finds it hard to distinguish the fight against IS and other military conflicts in Syria. Sergei Davidis. Photo from the 5th of December Party. SyriaUntold: What about the Russian opposition to the current government? Where does it stand on the Syrian conflict? Davidis: The real opposition to the Russian authorities — the non-system opposition — views Putin’s war in Syria negatively. This concerns the so-called “liberal” opposition too, as well as a considerable section of the Russian nationalist opposition and the Russian left. But the main theses of Russian opposition groups are pragmatic rather than humane — Russia is using funds for a distant and unnecessary war, funds that are needed to solve the numerous internal problems at home. Nevertheless, the idea that the Putin regime is waging war in Syria to support Bashar Al-Asad, to oppose the west and satisfy his own geopolitical ambitions, rather than really confronting IS and other terrorist groups, is seen as more or less self-evident by the opposition. SyriaUntold: Is indifference towards Syria somehow related to the poor status of civil liberties in today's Russia? Davidis: It’s difficult to judge the connection between the two exactly. But there’s definitely something. At a minimum, the numerous problems with rights and freedoms in Russia suck up a lot of time from the section of Russian society that is, in principle, ready to express its concern with these domestic issues, which doesn’t leave energy for problems taking place far from Russia. Moreover, the constant limitations on freedom of assembly and expression make getting your position across to the rest of society all the more difficult.