© SANA



The defeat of anti-Assad rebels who have partially controlled the city [Aleppo] since 2012 would leave nothing on the ground in Syria but Assad's regime and Islamic State. And all hope of a negotiated settlement involving the Syrian opposition will vanish. This has been a longstanding Russian objective - it was at the heart of Moscow's decision to intervene militarily four months ago.

It is hardly a coincidence that the bombardment of Aleppo, a symbol of the 2011 anti-Assad revolution, started just as peace talks were being attempted in Geneva. Predictably, the talks soon faltered. Russian military escalation in support of the Syrian army was meant to sabotage any possibility that a genuine Syrian opposition might have its say on the future of the country. It was meant to thwart any plans the West and the UN had officially laid out. And it entirely contradicted Moscow's stated commitment to a political process to end the war.

If there is one thing Europeans have learned in 2015, it is that they cannot be shielded from the effects of conflict in the Middle East. And if there is one thing they learned from the Ukraine conflict in 2014, it is that Russia can hardly be considered Europe's friend. It is a revisionist power capable of military aggression.

Aleppo will define much of what happens next. A defeat for Syrian opposition forces would further empower ISIS in the myth that it is the sole defender of Sunni Muslims - as it terrorises the population under its control. There are many tragic ironies here, not least that Western strategy against ISIS has officially depended on building up local Syrian opposition ground forces so that they might one day push the jihadi insurgency out of its stronghold in Raqqa. If the very people that were meant to be counted on to do that job as foot soldiers now end up surrounded and crushed in Aleppo, who will the West turn to? Russia has all along claimed it was fighting ISIS - but in Aleppo it is helping to destroy those Syrian groups that have in the past proved to be efficient against ISIS.

Russia's strategic objectives go much further, however. Putin wants to reassert Russian power in the Middle East, but it is Europe that he really has in mind. ... Putin was certainly caught off guard by the Ukrainian Maidan popular uprising, but he swiftly moved to restore dominance through use of force, including the annexation of territory. He calculated - rightly - that his hybrid war in Ukraine could not be prevented by the West.

Putin likes to cast himself as a man of order, but his policies have brought more chaos, and Europe is set to pay an increasing price. Getting the Russian regime to act otherwise will require more than wishful thinking. Aleppo is an unfolding human tragedy. But it is necessary to connect the dots between the plight of this city, Europe's future, and how Russia hovers over both.

Syrian rebels battled for their survival in and around Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Thursday after a blitz of Russian airstrikes helped government loyalists sever a vital supply route and sent a new surge of refugees fleeing toward the border with Turkey.

The Russian-backed onslaught against rebel positions in Aleppo coincided with the failure of peace talks in Geneva, and helped reinforce opposition suspicions that Russia and its Syrian government allies are more interested in securing a military victory over the rebels than negotiating a settlement.

After two days of what rebel fighters terrorists described as the most intense airstrikes yet, government forces had succeeded on Wednesday in cutting off the rebels ' terrorists' main supply route from the Turkish border to the portion of Aleppo city that remains under opposition terrorist control. On Thursday, the government captured several more villages in the surrounding countryside, prompting fears among residents and rebels terrorists that the city could soon be entirely surrounded.

The loss of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the most significant urban center to fall, at least partially, under rebel control, would represent a potentially decisive blow to the nearly five-year-old rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The rebels have maintained control of much of Aleppo since they surged into the city in 2012, prompting U.S. intelligence assessments that they eventually would topple the government in Damascus.

With the push around Aleppo, pro-government forces were able to break a rebel siege on two predominantly Shi'ite villages, Nubl and Zahra, which had been surrounded by rebel forces for the past three years and sustained only by government airdrops of food .

Rebel fighters sounded desperate as they described enduring more than 200 airstrikes in the past 24 hours alone. Commanders from a range of rebel groups, from moderates to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, issued urgent appeals for reinforcements from other parts of the country.

UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura suspended the Geneva talks until February 25 for one reason: Russia had taken full advantage of a peace conference it had helped organize to escalate its military campaign against nationalist rebels in northwestern Syria—a predominantly air campaign that was adding significantly to the horrific death toll of Syrian civilians.

Reacting to de Mistura's decision to suspend the talks, Secretary of State John Kerry said, "The continued assault by Syrian regime forces—enabled by Russian airstrikes—against opposition-held areas, as well as regime and allied militias' continued besiegement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, have clearly signaled the intention to seek a military solution rather than enable a political one." This is potentially important.

Moscow has used its "co-convener" status of the Vienna peace process (which mandated the Geneva conference) as a cover to distract and occupy Washington and the West while pursuing its political-military objective: neutralizing the armed nationalist opposition in order to create for the West—for Washington in particular—the horror of a binary choice between Bashar the Barrel Bomber and Baghdadi the False Caliph.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken the measure of the West and has decided that he can pull this off with impunity. There is no guarantee that he can. But the tut-tutting of Western politicians about the mistake Putin is making and the quagmire that awaits him impresses the Russian dictator not in the least. He has been schooled by an ever-widening gap between Western (especially American) word and deed in Syria. He has noticed that for all of the verbiage about human suffering, mass homicide, terrified refugees, red lines, and people stepping aside, the West has protected not a single Syrian inside Syria from his regrettable client.

For Moscow the attempted military solution being enabled by the Vienna process has nothing to do with facilitating stable, legitimate governance or defeating the Islamic State (ISIL, ISIS, Daesh). The mission is to defeat all nongovernment, non-ISIL armed opponents of the Assad regime. The desired end-state is one in which the uprising against Assad family misrule is effectively neutralized, with Assad and Baghdadi alone left standing in Syria. This is also the end-state desired by ISIL. So much for the American "common enemy" thesis.

Saving innocent lives is not, however, a universal motivator. So put humanitarian considerations aside: what happens in Syria does not stay in Syria. The gap in Syrian policy between US words and deeds surely has not imposed limits on Vladimir Putin's dangerous and destabilizing behavior in Europe. And if his current offensive in Syria sends yet more waves of refugees in the direction of Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Western Europe, we should not expect Russia's leader to lose sleep. Barack Obama may not be the only one hoping to leave office before the piper is paid. Russia may be dying, but Putin's nationalist show of military aggression may buy him a few years in the saddle. Still, it is extraordinarily dangerous. It is a threat to the peace.

Syrian rebels—including some reportedly armed and trained by the United States—are defenseless against Russian air attacks. If diplomacy is to have a chance—if a military solution is to be avoided—leaving them defenseless is the wrong medicine. Mr. Obama is now making moves in Europe that recognize the threat posed by Russia: moves from which his successor will benefit. Perhaps—if for no other reasons than to save lives, give diplomacy a chance, and curb Russian impunity—he will move in Syria as well.