Details of Russia’s military campaign in Syria:

• The Syrian government has regained control of 96 percent of Aleppo’s territory, Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said on Dec. 12. (TASS, 12.12.16)
• Russia and the U.S. traded blame over the Islamic State’s recapture of the Syrian city of Palmyra over the weekend. Russia blamed a lack of cooperation from the U.S. in fighting IS, while the Pentagon said the Palmyra loss proved that Russia and Syria never gave any priority to battling IS extremists. (RFE/RL, 12.13.16)
• Twelve Chechen soldiers serving in Russian Defense Ministry units at a base in Khankala, east of Grozny, the Chechen Republic’s capital city, have been dismissed for refusing to deploy to Syria. (The Moscow Times, 12.13.16)
• Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed the death of one of its army officers in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Dec. 7. Colonel Ruslan Galitsky was wounded during shelling by "militants of the so-called [Syrian] opposition" from western neighborhoods of Aleppo, the ministry said. (AP, 12.07.16)
• On Dec. 11, Russian state-run television ran a segment showing what appears to be one of Russia’s most elite military units fighting in Syria. In the video, some of the Russian Special Operations troops can be seen with red-dot weapon sights, thermal imaging devices, laser range finders and modern bolt-action sniper rifles. Elite Russian units in Syria take part in search and rescue operations, assassinations of key rebel figures and coordination of air strikes. Groups of heavily armed soldiers were shown coordinating sniper attacks, using robotic tanks and inspecting rebel corpses. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Russian military should use its combat experience in Syria to further modernize its arsenals. (The Washington Post, 12.13.16, AP, 12.11.16, AP, 12.07.16)
• While many are focused on Russian armor and sorties, some in the U.S. defense establishment have noticed another sign of Russian progress: their ability to work through local proxy forces in Ukraine and Syria, allowing Moscow to exert influence while keeping deployments small, costs down and troops away from the front lines. In Syria, U.S. officials have seen small groups of Russian special operations forces “work quite effectively” with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops and the Iranian Qods Force and Hezbollah. “That’s been their M.O. in the Donbass and in Syria,” said a U.S. military official. (Foreign Policy, 12.09.16)

Response to Russia’s military campaign in Syria:

• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the Syrian government’s bombardment of the city of Aleppo amounts to "war crimes" and has called for the Syrian government’s allies, Russia and Iran, to help end it. Kerry also urged Russia on Dec. 10 to "show a little grace" in allowing civilians and opposition fighters to safely evacuate their fast-shrinking eastern Aleppo enclave, even as U.S. officials scrambled to figure out which rebels want to leave and which may insist on staying to fight on in a battle now effectively lost. (The Washington Post, 12.10.16, RFE/RL, 12.10.16)
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande expressed horror regarding the Syrian government’s Russian-backed advance on the Syrian city of Aleppo, with the French president blaming Russia for the humanitarian crisis in the besieged city. (Bloomberg, 12.13.16)
• The U.K.'s foreign intelligence chief says that Russia and the Syrian government are blocking efforts to end the war in Syria and defeat the extremist Islamic State by treating all opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as terrorists. (RFE/RL, 12.08.16)

Risk of accidental or intentional confrontation between Western and Russian forces in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Strategies and actions recommended:

• No significant developments.

Analysis:

• Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, at a conference in Beirut last week: “Russia’s action in Syria is not really about Syria, or even about the Middle East. It’s about its global role—and eventually a coalition of equals with the U.S.” (Financial Times, 12.13.16)
• Journalist David Gardener of the Financial Times: “Aleppo, marking the defeat of the urban rebellion in Syria and defensible perimeters of a shrunken Assad state, is another Iranian victory. It establishes contiguous Iranian client territory: from the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, up to the Iran-backed Shia paramilitary coalition operating west of the U.S.-backed offensive on Mosul, across to the Syrian coast and down to Beirut, where Hezbollah has managed to install a Christian ally as president.” (Financial Times, 12.13.16)
• Former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter W. Galbraith: “Russia’s leverage with Mr. Assad will diminish as the opposition crumbles in Syria’s west and Russian airpower becomes less important. At that point, the opportunity to extract concessions will disappear, and the field will belong to Mr. Assad and Iran.” (New York Times, 12.06.16)
• Swedish Defense Research Agency: “The Russian Armed Forces are developing from a force primarily designed for handling internal disorder and conflicts in the area of the former Soviet Union towards a structure configured for large-scale operations also beyond that area.” (Swedish Defense Research Agency, December 2016)

Other important news:

• The U.S. and Russia are "poles apart" in trying to agree on terms for evacuations from rebel-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo, U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland says. (RFE/RL, 12.08.16)
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump would align more closely with Russian objectives. “The commitment to fighting terrorism has been expressed much more clearly than the concrete actions of the Obama administration,” Lavrov told reporters at an OSCE meeting in Germany. (Bloomberg, 12.09.16)
• Last week, two top leaders of the Syrian civilian opposition quietly visited Washington to meet with lawmakers and experts with connections to the Trump transition team. Their mission was as simple as it was urgent: to convince U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that he needs Syria’s rebels as much as they need him. They also said that they want to help the Trump administration work with Russia and against the terrorists. (The Washington Post, 12.11.16)
• The U.S. Senate has passed a $618.7 billion National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017 that gives U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the authority to send surface-to-air missiles to help Syrian fighters. The U.S. is also sending 200 additional troops to Syria, nearly doubling the Pentagon’s presence there, to help thousands of Kurdish and Arab fighters massing for an assault on the city of Raqqa, where the Islamic State has a stronghold. (The Washington Post, 12.08.16, New York Times, 12.09.16)
• The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a factory fire in the Moscow suburbs last month, an online jihadist-monitoring organization reported. (The Moscow Times, 12.09.16)
• U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state. Trump has tapped former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lead the Energy Department and retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security. (RFE/RL, 12.12.16, Dow Jones, 12.13.16, AFP, 12.12.16)
• The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. However, Trump said:  "I don't believe they interfered. That became a laughing point—not a talking point, a laughing point.” (The Washington Post, 12.09.16, The Washington Times, 12.09.16)