Syria: Siege Is Lifted… Sorta

Syrian rebels announced that they broke through a government siege of the city of Aleppo aiming to provide some reprieve to the ~250,000 residents stranded in the city. The government simultaneously denied that the rebels broke through while promising to crush them for doing so. The victory is largely illusive though, as neither civilians nor rebel fighters can safely move in and out of the city and the government, backed by Russia, has intensified its bombing campaign. The victory also risks strengthening extremist movements within the rebel forces even further, particularly the Jabhat al-Nusra, which used to be part of al-Qaeda before undergoing a rebranding effort. The five year conflict has claimed almost 500,000 lives, produced four million refugees and created an incredibly complex, overlapping web of proxy wars. 

Pnut Analysis: Our Summary Of The Syrian Civil War