Kremlin dilemma: Regain Palmyra or advance on Idlib?
Victories in the war on the Islamic State are tempered by setbacks that call for a careful examination of how to proceed.
In Russia, joy over the progress of Syrian forces in eastern Aleppo eclipsed bitterness over the loss of Palmyra — but only for a few days.
“[The loss] came as a blow to prestige, including our own prestige,” Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, the former head of Russia's general staff, said in a Dec. 11 interview with Interfax. He said he regards the Islamic State's (IS) recent takeover of Palmyra as a mistake in military planning and a failure to track the accumulation of power in the area.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Syrian government forces had to leave Palmyra because they were outnumbered by enemy troops — and the supposed numbers kept growing. On Dec. 11, the military department mentioned 4,000 IS militants, and the next day that figure reached 5,000.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that the IS offensive on Palmyra and IS fighters fleeing to Syria from the Iraqi assault on Mosul might be part of a strategic plan to relieve the pressure on rebel groups in eastern Aleppo.
