Syrian Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Azzam and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov met in Moscow on June 4. The meeting was one in a series of bilateral discussions aimed to implement decisions adopted at the 11th meeting of the joint Permanent Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, of which Borisov is the co-chair, held in Damascus in December 2018.

As the Syrian authorities seek to build “an information society” in the country — as part of the reconstruction and renovation efforts — Russian information technology (IT) companies are eyeing yet another promising area.

In prewar Syria, the growing access of citizens — especially the youth — to IT technologies such as satellite TV, internet and cellphones, which provided information from abroad, created high expectations on reforms and upward mobility, all of which, amid unsatisfied desires, have been gradually contributing to the protest moods.

The Syrian Computer Society (SCS), founded in 1989 and later headed by Bashar al-Assad, emerged as a social incubator for the Syrian elite's youths. During the war, the SCS became allegedly linked to the pro-government Syrian Electronic Army, while Syria was identified by Western experts to be the first Arab country to have an Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyberattacks on its enemies.