What complicates matters further is that Russia’s allies in Syria – the Assad government, Iran and Hezbollah – are pressing ahead on the war front. Hezbollah’s dramatic victory in gaining control of the heights on the Syrian-Lebanese border and Syrian government forces’ relentless advance toward Deir ez-Zor and its control over long stretches of the Syrian-Iraqi border – they testify that the (residual) war has a dynamic of its own.
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