![Russian Lt.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi speaks to the media as a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows a target hit in an airstrike on screen, Moscow, Russia, Aug. 10, 2016 (AP photo by Ivan Sekretarev).](https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/l_aleppo_russia_08102016_1.jpg?w=519&h=259&crop=1)
Fierce urban fighting alongside Machiavellian political maneuvering is nothing new to the Syrian conflict. But the past few days have brought a new twist in the upheaval with lasting, if opaque, repercussions for Syria’s civil war and the many actors involved in it directly or by proxy. The key center of the new convoluted and deadly developments is Aleppo, Syria’s prewar commercial capital, now a rubble-strewn ruin at the heart of the five-year-old conflict. After several days of intensified battles and curious political moves, a new crop of winners and losers is emerging. But identifying who they are, or who […]