VIENNA (Sputnik) — The opening of the exhibition was attended by Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich, Russia’s Permanent Representatives to International Organizations in Vienna Vladimir Voronkov and State Duma member Yevgeny Revenko.
The story of the conflict in Syria over the course of 2015 and 2016 is the theme of the exhibition. Images captured by Sputnik photojournalists and VGTRK cameramen tell the story of the Syrian conflict through the eyes of ordinary people whose lives have been devastated by the war.
Other photographs were taken at the Hmeymim air base and show the contributions of Russian Aerospace Forces in the counterterrorism operation.
The participants include award winning Sputnik journalists Valery Melinkov, Ilya Pitalev, Mikhail Alaeddin, and Mikhail Voskresensky, as well as VGTRK cameramen Viktor Prikhodko, and Alexander Pushin.
The photo exhibition in the Austrian capital is part of the tour of Syrian Chronicles in Russia and abroad. The tour started in Moscow at the State Duma in January 2017. Last April, the photos were displayed in Bucharest.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich commented: “The exhibition of Sputnik and VGTRG in Vienna sends a strong humanitarian and political message toward the fastest possible settlement of the Syrian crisis. It demonstrates which tragedies can happen in different countries when no joint anti-terrorism efforts are being made. This is some kind of a strong signal from Vienna to all those who announce readiness to collectively fight a terror threat. And Russia plays a leading role in consolidating all these efforts in the antiterrorism direction.”
Sputnik special photo correspondent Valery Melnikov commented: “This is not the first European city for the exhibition and I hope many more people will see it. Photography can communicate a great deal of emotion. In my work, I try to show the war in Syria and I want every single person in the world to feel the pain and suffering that people go through in this country, a country I was in love with only a few years ago.”
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