In mid-May 2023, media and Telegram channels reported that the President of Syria at the Arab League summit pointedly ignored the speech of the President of Ukraine. We have verified the accuracy of these reports.
On May 19, 2023, the annual summit of the League of Arab States (LAS) was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After a long break, the event was attended for the first time by a delegation from Syria led by President Bashar al-Assad - the country’s membership in the organization was suspended in 2011 due to the civil war and restored shortly before the forum in Saudi Arabia. Special guest of the summit became also the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky, who addressed representatives of the Arab world with a speech. As reported by the media and Telegram channels, during the speech of the Ukrainian leader, Assad defiantly took off his earphone for simultaneous translation. The authors of some publications specify that this happened at the moment when Zelensky “began talking about the so-called ‘war crimes of Russia’.”
Similar notes were published by “News", Lenta.ru, TV channelStar", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Regnum, "Arguments and facts", "Federal News Agency", "Moscow 24", EuroAsia Daily, "Public news service", "Economy today"etc. The message about Assad’s action was widely distributed on Telegram, several hundred channels wrote about it. Among the largest of them are “Operation Z: Military Correspondents of the Russian Spring"(532,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Ukraine.ru"(398,000), "Russia now"(334,000), "Putin on Telegram"(299,000), "Truthfulness"(228,000), Ateo Breaking (193,000), Voblya (166,000), "Uncle Slava"(162,000), "Sheikh Tamir" (134,000) and "Federation"(107,000). In personal channels, TV presenter, among others, spoke about the demarche of the Syrian president Vladimir Solovyov (266,000) and a regular guest on his broadcasts Yakov Kedmi (94,000), "military correspondent" Alexander Sladkov (97,000), journalist Dmitry Gordon (75,000), head of the self-proclaimed DPR Denis Pushilin (69,000) and deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Timofey Bazhenov (15,000).
The authors of most publications about the alleged incident refer to tweet blogger Jackson Hinkle, who for some reason is called a journalist. In reality he leads A relatively popular channel on YouTube, and in its videos and posts it does not hide its pro-Russian position. For example, in May Hinkle published a video where a mercenary of the Wagner PMC opens champagne in honor of the capture of Bakhmut (the blogger himself uses the term “liberation” accepted in Russian pro-government media), advertised T-shirts with the word Wagner, offered the American leadership to spend money intended to support Kyiv on the invasion of Canada, as well as repeatedly used in my tweets combination letters Z with the flags of the Russian Federation and the USA. In his tweet about Assad’s action at the summit, Hinkle does not provide a link to any source or a video fragment confirming his words. The American himself was not present in Jeddah.
The media and Telegram channels also do not provide messages from participants in the Arab League summit or an episode of the broadcast, during which it was possible to capture Assad removing his earphone for simultaneous translation right before or during Zelensky’s speech. A recording of the Ukrainian president's speech was published by him press service, as well as TV channels among others France 24 And Sky News Arabic. Assad was not included in the frame, but the recording shows that some Arab leaders listened to Zelensky without headphones. And this is not surprising, because the President of Ukraine spoke at the Arab League summit in English.
Like many heads of state, Bashar al-Assad speaks foreign languages. By education, Assad Jr. is a doctor, he graduated from the University of Damascus in 1988 and by the time should from biographical articles, he was already fluent in English. In 1992, the future president of Syria went to London to continue his studies and lived there for two years, after which he was forced to return to his homeland - his older brother, who was initially being prepared to succeed him, died in an accident, and Bashar al-Assad was supposed to take his place.
The Syrian President demonstrated his high level of English language proficiency in numerous interviews that foreign media conducted with him during his almost 25-year reign. Among them are conversations with correspondents ABC in 2011, Fox News in 2013, BBC in 2015, NBC And SwissInfo in 2016 and RT in 2020. After watching them, it is easy to see that the President of Syria does not need the help of a simultaneous interpreter to understand a less than ten-minute speech by the President of another country in English.
Thus, the assertion that Bashar al-Assad defiantly took off his earphone and thereby refused to listen to Vladimir Zelensky’s speech at the Arab League summit is not supported either by eyewitness accounts or videos filmed during the event. The President of Syria is fluent in English, so in order to understand the English-language speech of the President of Ukraine, he did not need the help of a simultaneous interpreter.
Cover photo: Kremlin.ru
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