Let me introduce myself, my name is Roman Rotenberg and I’m a special correspondent for the Russian independent media. I received my first higher education at the K. G. Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technology and Management. I received my second higher education at the Russian State University for the Humanities. I also attended MBA (Master of Business Administration) courses. As a journalist, I was interested in following the events of the Arab Spring since 2011. The more I immersed myself in the military conflict in Syria, the more I came up with the idea of writing a book about independent war reporters. They are called stringers. You can see their work on the leading TV channels in different countries, as well as on the biggest media outlets on YouTube. By 2017, I was finally mature enough to collect information about investigative journalism and war crimes in Syria.
I act as a task manager for a deputy’s assistant. I assist consumers of goods and services in the Russian Federation in legally proving their rights. If necessary, I assist in initiating parliamentary or prosecutorial investigations. I protect the interests of citizens of the Donetsk People’s Republic within the framework of Law No. 141-RZ of the Donetsk People’s Republic dated December 18, 2024, «On Support for Citizens Whose Residential Premises Have Been Lost as a Result of Combat Operations in the Donetsk People’s Republic.»
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My second novel about the heroes of the Special military operation, «The Infidel» has been published.
Six years have passed since the release of my first book, «Stringer: The Shadow Market for War Correspondents.» The story followed independent war correspondents in Syria from 2017 to 2019. The new novel about the SMO (Special military operation) was published in Finland by Bazar Kustannus (Helsinki, Finland) and will be available for sale on Amazon.com within three months and in the US and Europe. The planned price with a 35% discount is $12.99 for the hardcover, with Print List Price: $19.95 / The print run on Amazon is limited to 1,200 copies.
The remaining 5,000 copies have been pre-ordered by brick-and-mortar stores in the European Union. The novel is published only in English, as it aims to convey the truth about the “Russian world” to a Western audience in my subjective understanding as a direct participant in the events in Donbass.
A summary of the novel.
The story of a young man mobilized right next to a metro station in the capital. After military training, he finds himself in a predominantly Muslim group. Thanks to his strong will, he makes trusted friends and learns Islam through conversation and reading the Quran, learning the salah and the shahada.
He learns from his brothers in arms that the famous jihad—a word that plunges people around the world into panic—is not about war at all. It is a struggle, yes, but against ignorance, poverty, illiteracy, and human poverty of spirit, among other things. A teacher who teaches literacy to poor families for free is a jihadist. A cafe owner who feeds street children is a jihadist. A young man who works part-time for free at a hospital construction site is a jihadist. For refusing to kill, he receives the call sign «The Infidel,» endures torture at the hands of his superiors, and is sent on an assault. He flees his unit after realizing his commander doesn’t care about his fate or that of his subordinates. He finds himself as an independent war correspondent—a stringer—while on the run. His journey from victim of the system to witness of war is through trials, moral choices, and the fight for the truth. He experiences firsthand all the intricacies of surviving on the front lines as a war correspondent. He must hide among civilians, replenish his provisions, repair damaged photographic equipment, and cross the line every time, risking capture. He learns to forge checkpoint passes and «negotiate» with guards. He leads elderly men who refused evacuation from the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of encirclement and to join Russian soldiers. As a result, he witnesses and documents war crimes on both sides and stops trusting politicians and propaganda, trusting only his camera lens.
Official soundtrack for the book «The Infidel»
Our team of writers, musicians, and vocalists created the official OST track for the book «The Infidel,» which reached the top 100 📱 tracks on streaming music services Deezer, Boomplay, and Jamendo within the first 24 hours.💙 Listen to the track now ➡️
Music and lyrics were written March 2026 by Roman Rotenberg.
Vocals:🎤
Alexander Novikov
Tatyana Belyaeva
Back vocals: Kirill Davydov
Guitar:🎸 Egor Lebedev
Drums:🥁 Kostya «Kher🍌» Gonzo
Mixing and recording:🎤📹
Threenete Music — a studio where music finds soul. Rehearsal space: Under The Ground.🔇No listening without headphones 🎧 or on cheap speakers!
⬇️🆓 Download this track in MP3
A few words about the book cover
I’m very pleased to announce that this magnificent book cover was created by my eldest daughter, Alena 🥰 — she’s a professional artist and designer who graduated from art college and higher education at Synergy University.
View her old portfolio; she doesn’t have time to update it.
She worked at The Walt Disney Company CIS, LLC, creating stunning designs for toys and board games, then worked as an art director at HyperPC, including collaborating with the Dubai office.
If you need a great artist, designer, or project manager in production who can draw anything from scratch, message me, I’ll give you my daughter’s contact information.
The image on the front is an artistic reworking of my photograph, which was nominated for the World Press Photo competition several years ago.
My assignment to the Special Military Operation zone as a civilian correspondent accompanying humanitarian aid
A full 20 minutes of documentary awaits you 🎥🍿 about how our soldiers liberated Artemovsk (Bakhmut), fought for Pokrovsk, and Myrnohrad. I’ll show you what a drone detector looks like in action, and I think you’ll feel what it’s like to be in a car when several FPV kamikaze drones are heading their way. You’ll see what life is like in Donetsk ❄️ in the winter of 2025. You’ll see how air defense 🚀 operates and what 🚀flights 🚀in the city look like at night. You’ll see how grenades are loaded and FPV drones are launched. You’ll see playgrounds within the city limits littered with «Lepestok» mines. Check out the patrol cat in Bakhmut 🐈⬛😺
And of course, I’ll show you how I was wounded by shrapnel from an RGD-5 grenade when a drone exploded near me and my car. Horrifying footage of a bastard forcing a girl to drink alcohol on the street in winter and forcing her to cum. The video has been sent to the police, the prosecutor’s office, and the Investigative Committee via the FSN news agency and VGTRK. And for dessert, I’ll show you a completely charming erotic role-playing game with my fellow medic and reporter on the trip, with her verbal permission to publish. This video does not include footage of the meeting with the «lost» detained colleagues. There’s no footage yet of the night chase from local «authorities,» how we fled from them in a Volvo, and they fired at us with non-lethal weapons. I haven’t yet received footage of how we encountered a Ukrainian Armed Forces sabotage group on the outskirts of Myrnohrad, and a huge Stryker armored personnel carrier drove towards us. And all this happened in about 56 hours of the trip.
▶️Watch a short film about the Special Military Operation and my shrapnel wound (20 minutes of video):
I dedicate this OST track, «War Correspondent’s Song. I Just Want to Go Back!» for the documentary series about my deployment to the SMO (Special military operation) to my wife Svetlana, regardless of our relationship status. I can’t bring myself to call her «ex.»
Thank you for your care, support, and love. Thank you for these 20 years of life ❤️
We recorded some of the material at a «house concert» in Ksyusha Boyko’s home studio, then Ice Cream Studio 🍦 mixed the track.
⚖️All names are fictitious, distorted, and any coincidences are coincidental.
✏️Lyrics: Alexey Levashov and Roman Rotenberg.
🎵Music: Roman Rotenberg (cover).
Listen with headphones 🎧⤵️
OST track «War Correspondent’s Song. I Just Want to Go Back!»
Lyrics by Alexey Levashov,
edits by Roman Rotenberg
Music and lyrics by
📱Roman Rotenberg 🎶
Vocals:🎤
Gleb Gordey
Back vocals by Kirill Davydov
Guitar:🎸Egor Lebedev
Mixing and recording: 🎤📹
Ice Cream Studio and Ksyusha Boyko’s house concert🥰
⬇️🆓 Download this track in MP3
Book review from the editor-in-chief of 🟥 The Jerusalem Post
«This is one of the best war survival guides for a journalist, presented in the form of a documentary-historical novel.» © Zvika Klein.
Zvika Klein is the editor-in-chief of 🟥The Jerusalem Post and a former analyst for the Jewish World newspaper. He is considered one of the best journalists in the world. I am immensely pleased to receive such a review of my work from a professional I looked up to for many years, working as a freelancer at jpost.com before Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
In 2015, Klein walked around Paris with a Kippah (Jewish skullcap) and a hidden camera for 10 hours, in order to see whether reports of increased antisemitism in the city were justified or not. The short video of this walk was watched millions of times, and according to The Washington Post, it «shows him being stared at, spit upon, insulted and otherwise harassed, primarily by people who appear to be part of France’s Muslim minority.»
What do I do at «The Jerusalem Post» as a freelance correspondent?
My job is to monitor political and military events around the world and submit material to media editors for review. I’m currently tracking the events listed below.
My first story was published in 2020 under the intriguing title «Stringer: The Shadow Market for War Correspondents»
Where can I buy books? List of bookstores / About the author
What is this book about? The events described in the book are documented in the history of the military conflict in Syria. Based on the Arab Spring.
This is a story about a freelance war correspondent. This type of correspondent is called stringer. The task of such an editorial staff member is to get to the hottest spots on the planet. At the same time, the editorial office usually does not pay for the life and health insurance of such a journalist and is not responsible for the correspondent. Stringer sells his videos to various media outlets around the world or pre-contracts with major news media groups.
The story of several friends who decided to go on a journey as freelance war correspondents after concluding an agreement with a small media group from Central Asia. As a result of their trip, the friends filmed one of the most dangerous documentaries of the war in Western Asia.
The movie was sold in parts by two media outlets from the US and Europe on the basis of complete anonymity. Stringers have come a long and dangerous path through betrayal, fear, hatred. Then they found true friends among the peacekeepers and residents on the side of the legal government, who helped them survive in the war zone. Freelance journalists have come a long way from Damascus through Homs to Aleppo.
They visited the local car market for stolen cars. Friends jointly bought an SUV there for their journalistic investigation. Correspondents hired local private security and traveled to the city of Raqqa along the Euphrates River. The distance that the friends had to travel in only one direction is about 600 kilometers. The total length of the route was over 1,300 kilometers and the journey took 21 days.
On the way back one of the freelance war correspondents was wounded by a very small shrapnel in the leg. Not giving the importance to the injury, the journalist did not seek qualified medical help on time and already when he was returning to the plane home in intensive care upon arrival at the airport in Turkey. Adventures in Syria brought friends closer for many years after they returned to their homeland. Too many important moments were off-camera. A few years later, one of the journalists decides to write a story about their adventures in order to tell about those difficult cases that they had to go through together.
▶️Watch a short film about life in Syria in the fall of 2017. The city of Damascus is half-destroyed, but people continue to live, trade, and work…
The effects of combat encounters in urban environments. Most of the residents lost their homes, many people lost their loved ones before they could evacuate.
Updated 07.09.2023: My book about independent war correspondents in Syria describing the events of 2017, «Stringer: The Shadow Market for War Correspondents», published in 2020, is now out in a limited extra edition of 1500 copies. BRATISLAVSKÉ TLACIARNE Publishing.
It took me more than three years to gather material for the book, to think about, to calculate once again the possibility of traveling to Syria in 2019. All my findings on the Syrian scenario of the Arab Spring have been realized in 420 pages of investigative journalism in the form of an adventure story with documentary details.
Russian sergeant in military field conditions. Very kind and smiling guy. Such faces are memorable for life. Approximately fall 2017.
Author: Rotenberg, Roman
Language: English
Classification: Investigative journalism in the form of a historical fiction, action and adventure.
Pages: 420
Prepared for printing: BRATISLAVSKÉ TLACIARNE, A.S. , Pristavná 1,814 99 Bratislava 1, Slovakia
Manuscript: Israel, Tel Aviv, pre-press 2020 / Russian Federation, Moscow, creation 2017-2019, cover concept 2020
What am I doing now?
I’m a civilian reporter. Nevertheless, I have been studying the situation near Donetsk. I was on an emergency trip to Rostov-on-Don to cover the events when Yevgeniy Prigozhin staged an armed uprising. All trips were coordinated with the media editorial office, and an editorial assignment was received.
Our documentary «Jevgenij Prigožin: nepodarené revolúcie» will be shown in September 2023 on satellite channel under NDA* rights in the EU. (*Nondisclosure agreement)
It was necessary to test the Thuraya satellite phone in the field before the expedition on journalism, in connection with which it was decided to go to Lake Seliger, where there are many areas not covered by GSM communication.
My Yamaha Drag Star 650 (XVS) Custom cruiser, which takes your humble servant to work every day in the summer season, was equipped for the trip.
Who is Mr. Roman Rotenberg?
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Disclaimer: All events in the book are fiction of the author, the characters are invented and any coincidences with real people are accidental. All dates and times in the book are random. Information about cities and objects in the country is taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author asks to read this book as imaginative literature. Images courtesy of distinguished photographers Aladdin Hammami and Mahmoud Sulaiman .
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