More than a month of heavy fighting has resulted in large engagements, big casualty figures, but limited territorial gains for the Syrians.

These have been some of the largest engagements of the war. Battalion sized elements backed by half a dozen armored vehicles (on the rebel side at least, the SAA is much heavier) squaring off.

The rebels are much lighter, and lack any air support, but the Turks have kept them supplied with ATGMs and artillery rockets. They’ve also given them APCs.

The biggest impediments to the Syrian offensive are political. The Russians want a return of the status quo ante bellum.

But they also want to peal Turkey away for the west, and to get the Turks out of NATO.

They also view the Turks as a useful lever to use against us, and the Kurds, in northern Syria.

As a result of these competing interests, they’ve instituted repeated, one sided, ceasefires to appease the Turks.

These are about as self defeating as they sound, because they’ve occurred whenever the Syrian coalition has made real gains, and they’ve given the rebels a critical opportunity to reinforce, and to resupply, squandering any offensive momentum.

This policy appears to have embolden the Turks. They’ve increased their material support for the rebels, they’ve reinforced their outposts in Idlib, and they’ve started to shell the Syrian forces.

The rebels have suffered more than a thousand casualties in the fighting though, and those are big losses for them. Syrian figures are up for debate, but given how they retreat when overmatched, they are undoubtedly lower. They are very good about preserving manpower.

Assuming the fighting continues, the Syrians have been reinforcing their lines, and air strikes resumed in Idlib this morning, the rebels may still find themselves in trouble.