I’ve republished the article For those who have not yet realised: big psyop happening in Syria right now. Link
Update, 16th December:
The Assad presidency, of course, has ended. It seems that the Syrian Arab Army couldn’t execute a coherent defence, and perhaps – as the successful playbook requires – it indicates leadership that was bought off. It has been my feeling that the source of the problem has been Sunni Islam and its intolerance of other faiths, and how and where this manifests in the Syrian armed forces, and how it creates affinity with Turkish-backed invaders and negates feelings of loyalty to a Damascus that puts other religions on an equal footing.
Seeing how things were to go, the Russians, I think, forced guarantees from the Turkish government – which oversaw what was essentially an invasion ultimately from its territory, thus giving it command level influence with what is a NATO proxy army – which is why we see Russian bases survive in Latakia. It remains to be seen how strained the relations are between these two countries. Turkey, under the Astana Process, had a responsibility for the demilitarisation of a buffer zone in Idlib that it clearly did not live up to.
I’ve noted on X (or Twitter) for a long time that all the aggression by Israel in 2023 and 2024 inflicted upon Gaza and Lebanon has been about trying to draw Syria into a war so as to compromise Russia. The ultimate point is to disrupt Russian operations in Ukraine (Israel works for London – it isn’t the other way around). Unable to make this happen, there was a direct attack – the Turks would have been persuaded that it was a good idea to be seen to be behind it. It must have been hoped that Russia would get bogged down. Instead, the Russians (in my opinion) made a decision to let the Turks create their own new mess, made a threat to secure their own interests, and persuaded Assad that there was nothing to be gained by not standing down.