As you might have heard, the opposition in Syria is in serious trouble.
Last summer, Bashar al-Assad’s army was on the ropes, as the SAA fought a multi-front war against a dizzying array of rebel forces including ISIS. Then Quds commander Qassem Soleimani went to Russia. After that, everything changed.
Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.
“Russian and Syrian forces intensified their campaign on rebel-held areas around Aleppo that are still home to around 350,000 people and aid workers have said the city - Syria's largest before the war - could soon fall.”
Russia’s feared “Spetsnaz” special forces units have surrounded the Syrian city of Aleppo. 70,000 of Syrian refugees are fleeing the fighting between ISIS and a coalition of Syrian government forces together with Russian special forces and Iranian-Lebanese Hezbollah fighters. The commandos are said to be acting covertly with regime forces in retaking parts of Aleppo from ISIS militants after years of civil war.
Back in October, we previewed the “promised” battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city prior to the war.
By the time Russia began constructing an air base at Latakia, the city - which is immensely important both from a strategic and psychological perspective - was controlled by a hodgepodge of rebels and militants including al-Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army, and ISIS.