THANKS, UR!:

Nearly 18 months into Russia's intervention to prevent Assad's defeat at the hands of rebel groups that were advancing on his heartland areas of Latakia and Tartous, it is increasingly unclear just how Moscow will recoup its investment in the world's most complex and intractable conflict.

While it no longer appears Assad is in danger of falling, what remains of Syria looks nothing like the prewar country he used to rule. Central authority in the once-rigid police state has been subsumed several times over - first by opposition groups, and then by regional players also increasingly invested in shaping postwar outcomes in their own interests, which only partly align with what Putin wants. Protagonists on both sides are drowning in a swamp they did not see ahead.

Putin, in particular, is learning that Syria in its present form is ungovernable. His December claim of "victory" at a Russian airbase near Idlib has been followed by a dizzying series of events which, on the contrary, have drawn Russia further into the war. At the same time they have exposed the Assad regime's near-total dependence on proxy support to hold its positions, let alone secure more gains. [...]

"The only winner so far is Iran," said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat who defected from the regime in mid-2013. "It achieves what it wants without too much noise. Iran enjoys Russian-American conflict because it makes Russia more dependent on Iran to survive."

The clash between the US and Russian mercenaries sent to Syria was kept quiet by Moscow, which - in different circumstances - would have complained bitterly if 200 of its citizens had been killed by a rival power. For Putin to admit even that the men were there would have belied his claim of victory and withdrawal from a war that no longer needed him. Acknowledging they were advancing on an oil refinery held by US Kurdish proxies would have been an equally tough sell, at a time when securing Syria from the threat of terrorism and US hegemony remains the official narrative.

US intelligence officials believe the company that recruited the Russians - the Wagner Group - is controlled by a Putin confidant, Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

Also staking its claim in Deir ez-Zor is Iran, with which Russia has partnered to ensure that what remains of the anti-Assad opposition can no longer win the war. Russian officials have complained to counterparts in Turkey that Iranian aims are increasingly at odds with their own.

A senior Turkish diplomat told the Observer Moscow feels especially threatened by what it sees as Iran's determination to build a state security structure in Damascus modelled on its Revolutionary Guard Corps - the most powerful institution in Tehran 40 years after the Islamic Revolution. "But how can they stop them?", the diplomat said. "Putin won't have it his own way from here. And we can see [the Russians] getting irritated by it."

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