The non-regional actors — Russia and China — have been the most important supporters of the Bashar Assad regime since the onset of the Syrian crisis in 2011, with their veto power in the UN Security Council (UNSC) proving particularly useful.

Developments in the Kurdish autonomous region in the northern part of war-torn Syria in mid-2012 brought the issue of the Kurds, Turkey’s thorniest problem, back to the surface and led to the launch of the Kurdish peace process in 2013.

While the Biden administration is still in the midst of a policy review of the Middle East, Russia has intensified its military deployments in Syria, in particular the northeast, to weaken the influence and interests of the US in the war-torn country.