The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is weakening, and one of Assad’s primary backers — Russian President Vladimir Putin — is upping the ante. “Assad has lost significant territory over the past months; Putin is not about to tolerate his ouster,” geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, told Business Insider in an email. The regime has recently lost significant territory to Al Qaeda-led rebels in the north, Islamic State militants in the country’s center, and nationalist rebels in the south. The West, meanwhile, is ramping up air operations against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS …read more
Source: Business Insider
