The Russian president may
have given the impression that he had pulled his forces out of Syria, having
saved the regime of Bashar al Assad, and brought a level of military parity to
the conflict that allowed for a ceasefire.
But it would have been
naive to think he had given up the levers that exercise power in Damascus.
He has left a substantial
air force, naval task force, artillery and missile batteries behind, and
further reserved the "right" to continue to attack
"terrorists" fighting against the Assad regime.
Ceasefire agreement has
been blown to pieces by wave upon wave of airstrikes on civilian targets inside
Aleppo, and exists in the minds only of foreign diplomats as a fantasy they
need to hang onto with desperation.
According to Staffan de
Mistura, the Italian count of Swedish extraction with the near hopeless job of
UN peace envoy to Syria, a Syrian has been killed every 25 minutes over the
last couple of days.
He implored Russia and
America to step in to revive peace negotiations he had been chairing over
recent days.
In a briefing to the UN
Security Council, he said: "I really fear that the erosion of the
cessation is unravelling the fragile consensus around a political solution,
carefully built over the last year."
He knows the ceasefire's
heart has stopped.
Only by pounding on its
chest with unreasonable optimism, and some outside help, can it be revived.
But the peace is not in
America's gift. That power lies in the Kremlin and directly in the hands of
Vladimir Putin.
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