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.