The central issue of Wednesday's meetings in Moscow was whether Russia would give in. An immediate change of policy was obviously not on the cards since it is not in Putin's nature to make sudden concessions under pressure. But will he gradually and incrementally pull the rug from under the Syrian president?
According to Russian experts in Moscow, there are multiple reasons why the Kremlin will not. They range from concerns about future chaos in Syria in the aftermath of regime change to the damage...
... Russian officials claimed that they were in touch with a number of Free Syrian Army factions. In December Vladimir Putin went as far as to say that Russian airstrikes sometimes provide air cover to certain FSA groups during joint operations against the Islamic State. The fact that Moscow never stopped reaching out to opposition groups that may or may not be loyal to the Assad government allowed it to set up contact with dozens of factions and convince them to join the ceasefire deal once the truce finally ...
... rivalry. Especially clear it has been manifested in Yemen.
Along with heightened Shiite-Sunni contradictions the situation was also marked by a deep split in the Sunni camp. The reason of it was a cross-border activities of an extremist organization - the Islamic State. ISIS has positioned itself as a champion of a global project - the caliphate. Its activists denounce and condemn the Arab national movements and states. The Islamic State has huge resources and ideological appeal, control vast territories,...
