Syria and Russia have announced the end of last week’s Idlib Province ceasefire on Monday, and have resumed some airstrikes against rebel targets in the northwestern province.
Officials say the decision was because the rebels had not complied with
the terms of the ceasefire, both in that some rebel faction attacked a
Russian base, and more importantly, reestablishing the buffer zone isn’t
happening.
Nor indeed was it going to. Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front said that their
support for the ceasefire was intact, but that they had no intention of
complying with the term of withdrawing 20 km out of the buffer zone.
This appears to have convinced government forces that the truce was
unsustainable, so the few days of calm the locals got appears to have
come to a close, and fighting is once again raging in the area.
Time for Russia and Syria to realize that they need to clean out Idlib regardless of what Turkey may want. Turkey wants to seize Syrian territory and is using the jihadists to do it. Putin needs to tell Erdogan if he wants continued S-400 system support, Turkey needs to get out of Idlib or join in on getting rid of the jihadists.
Turkey will either join the cause or will be kicked out of everything.