Clashes between the Syrian government forces (the Syrian army, including the Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade, Hezbollah and others) and the Jaish al-Fatah militant coalition, led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian Al-Qaeda branch) have been ongoin in the western part of Aleppo city.
The pro-government forces on the battlefield are supported by the Syrian Arab Air Force. The Russian Aerospace Forces don’t provide a close air support to them, but provide intelligencce and coordination of the operation (recently, the Russian Tu-214R electronic surveillance aircraft was observed in the area).
The 1070 Apartment Project, the Al-Assad Neighborhood (its length is about 1,4 km), the areas west of the 3000 Apartment Project and Minyan remain the main scenes of clashes.
Experts note that the jihadists have concentrated a high number of experienced troops, artillery, rocket launchers and military equipment at a restricted front in western Aleppo. To do this, they had been pushed to use almost all their resources from the rear bases in Idlib province. If Jabhat al-Nusra is not able to achieve a decided success in clashes with the government forces soon, this will lead to its total collapse as a powerbroker in the war. The group’s material and technical base will be destroyed and experienced troops and field commanders killed in the clashes. We’ve been already able to observe signs of this tendency since the failed al-Nusra attempt to dig in the Ramouseh Artillery Acandemy in southern Aleppo.
The video filmed on October 31 shows clashes in Minyan:
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Last weekend, elite units of the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces and the Desert Hawks Brigade were deployed in Aleppo to counter the militants’ offensive operation to capture the al-Assad Military Academy and the nearby areas. Both formations operate T-90 MBTs supplied by Moscow over the last year.
The T-90 MBT in action at 1:48:
- The Ankara-led forces seek to do this to prevent the YPG from linking up the Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria;
- The YPG seeks to do this to set a foothold for linking up the Kurdish-controlled areas in Syria.
In this military situation, the coordination between the Syrian government forces and the YPG has once again become reality on the ground. The recent Kurdish operations in northeastern Aleppo were coordinated with the Syrian army and military sources say that Moscow increased military supplies to the YPG in the area.
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Moscow and Domascus uses the Kurds to build up a buffer zone to prevent the coalition of Turkish-backed militant group from attacking the Syrian army and its allies in Aleppo city. In mid-October Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki officially announced that the next stage of Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield will include an advance on the ‘regime forces’ in Aleppo.
