With tensions high between Turkey and Russia, Moscow's intervention risks drawing the Kurds into the geopolitical game and escalating divisions within the Syrian resistance.
The Syrian regime says Russian air-strikes hit "ISIS dens"—but a look at the map indicates the strikes were nowhere near ISIS territory, and targetted rebel forces hostile to ISIS.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is now the first Western leader to take Vladimir Putin's bait in agreeing that Bashar Assad can be part of a Syrian "transition government."
China is reported to be sending warships to Syria to augment the Russian build-up there—as word emerges of a Uighur jihadist group allied with the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
With the Rojava Kurds mounting an offensive on the last ISIS-held border town in northern Syria, Turkey has launched a new propaganda push to brand them as "terrorists."
Amid signs of an escalating Russian intervention in Syria, the opposition government-in-exile issued a statement pledging to "defeat any foreign occupation."
Russian fighter pilots are arriving in Syria, to begin sorties against ISIS and rebel forces—amid reports that Moscow's elite units are already fighting on the ground for the regime.
A partial ceasefire in Syria was brokered by the great regional enemies Turkey and Iran—and may signal the division of the country into "spheres of influence."
Washington has given Turkey a green light to crush the revolutionary Kurds—in Turkey, Syria and Iraq alike—as the price of Ankara's cooperation against ISIS.
Pro-opposition sources in Syria say a force of North Korean soldiers has arrived in Damascus, and been mobilized to the rebel-controlled suburbs of Ghouta district.
The Iran nuiclear deal comes as the US is in a de facto alliance with Tehran against ISIS, and includes a lifting of sanctions on a notorious commander of counterinsurgency forces in Syria and Iraq.
Syrian regime forces backed by Iranian troops clashed with residents of two Alawite villages outside Hama following a wave of mass arrests in the area.
