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Syrian opposition forces toppled the Bashar al Assad regime on December 7 after only 11 days of fighting. Opposition forces declared victory over Assad as they advanced into Damascus. The regime negotiated its surrender as Assad fled to Russia without making any statements to his people to acknowledge the instability.
The rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria – a regime that the Kremlin helped prop up since 2015 – is a strategic political defeat for Moscow and has thrown the Kremlin into a crisis as it seeks to retain its strategic military basing in Syria.
The Bashar al Assad regime faces imminent collapse. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) appears to have already collapsed itself, as its units have fled repeatedly from advancing opposition forces across the country. The SAA is combat ineffective and has yet to present a meaningful defense against the advancing opposition. The opposition forces led by Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) have exploited the collapse of the SAA by advancing further southward and taking control of Homs City, which is the last major obstacle before Damascus. Various opposition groups have similarly taken control of large swaths of central and southern Syria and begun advancing into the southern and eastern outskirts of Damascus. The Assad regime appears to only control parts of Damascus and the western Syrian coast at the time of this writing. Syrian President Bashar al Assad has been entirely absent through the crisis and has refrained from making any public address. Some unverified reports have suggested that Assad has fled, possibly to Iran.
Russian forces have resumed their offensive operations directly aimed at seizing Pokrovsk through a turning maneuver from the south after successfully widening their salient south and southeast of the town. Russian forces, including elements of the 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]), began advancing further west and northwest of Selydove (southeast of Pokrovsk) along the Petrivka-Pustynka-Zhovte line south of Pokrovsk in late November 2024 after mainly focusing their offensive efforts on widening the salient south of Selydove and eliminating the Ukrainian pockets north and south of Kurakhove.
The Bashar al Assad regime faces an existential threat given the widespread collapse of regime forces and lack of sufficient external backing to bolster these forces.
Russian forces have not yet evacuated the Russian naval base in Tartus, Syria as of December 6, but it remains unclear whether Russia will keep its vessels at the port as Syrian rebels continue to advance swiftly across regime-held territory.
A pro-Russian and anti-Western candidate unexpectedly won the first round of the Romanian presidential election on November 24 due to likely Russian electoral interference and an effective large-scale TikTok influence campaign. Far-right Romanian political parties also made significant gains in the December 1 Romanian parliamentary elections. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election on December 6 following the declassification of Romanian intelligence documents outlining — likely Russian — electoral interference.
Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)-aligned opposition groups have begun a campaign to capture Homs after capturing Hama City on December 5.
The ongoing election dispute between Jubbaland and the SFG sparked a brief firefight in late November and continues to pose a heightened threat of further internal political violence and a direct or proxy conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia. Ethiopia could take advantage of the escalating dispute between Jubbaland and the Somali Federal Government (SFG) to increase its presence in the region in the context of Ethiopia’s own disputes with the SFG and Egypt.
The Kremlin is continuing to suffer significant manpower losses to make tactical advances in western Donetsk Oblast at the expense of Russia's ongoing war effort and the medium-term viability of the Russian economy.