Yeh, first glance is that it is very sad to see Putin sink to the spin game but maybe he has another game in mind.

Thank you, mgr.
There is a very complicated and inexorable chess game being played here, one with so many innocents in its crosshairs. So it has always been, so we can only hope for that maxim to change one day.
I think Mr Putin a master of give and take, something he MUST be, and cognizant of what actually constitutes a ‘loss’ vs giving ground for the opponent to ruefully discover is actually quicksand. But only after having jumped in with both feet, and only having enough rope with which to hang himself—and again, if only there is a branch above.
With two of the world’s indisputably most treacherous allies—Türkiye and Israel—making it a scoundrels’ tripartate Axis with the United States government (as currently and corruptly constituted.)

Re: cited passage: So, the question is: has the HTS and lesser extremist groups in Syria really changed their stripes?
Have they really transformed from Jihad to Jefferson?

Questions: Since when has Jefferson been the universal role model for non-Western ‘legitimate’ practitioners of the Islamic religion?
In what way do Islamic extremist terror-mongers differ from Judaic extremist terror-mongers?

Has the “most moral army” not just recently (Oct. 8th 2023) changed its ‘spots’ or has its intent, in truth, always been to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the “Other” through the practice of constant terror?

Duplicity is fine, so long as the perpetrators are on ‘our’ side.

Who/What have been the causes of so-called religious extremisms?
One possible answer: the ‘one-God’ doctrine, which mythologies are always the self-righteous side, no matter the side we are on!
Or perhaps evolution is to blame; definitely not ourselves, for we, critically thinking and reasoning beings are much more elevated than lowly animals of pure instinctive, reactive behaviors.

The remaining Russian bases in Syria are secure and I understand that most Russian resources in the ME are now in Libya. It is now Turkey, Israel and the US that will have to deal with the situation on the ground with the various factions now and going forward (forever..?), including the Kurds, while Russia sits back and looks on. Funny how things that go around, come around. In reality, the former Syria is now an ongoing problem for whom..? Not Russia, I think.

This is attested to by everything from the record of Far West Ltd (Peter Dale Scott, “The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War (Part Two),” Foreign Policy Journal, Jan. 10, 2010) to the allegations of the late Alexander Litvinenko (John Simkin, “Alexander Litvinenko,” Spartacus Educational, May 2013) to the weapons, narcotic, and gold-smuggling intrigues of GRU-tied arms dealer Viktor Bout (Elaine Shannon, “The Merchant of Death Is Back in Action,” Politico Magazine, Dec. 12, 2022), the results of which were often in congruence with the interests of neoconservative and liberal interventionist actors in the Western world, especially during the 1990s and early 2000s (for example, see Matt Kennard, “When Tony Blair Backed Putin’s Brutal War,” Declassified UK, March 25, 2022).

In that sense, Russia may just be returning to the same roots that can also be observed in many other Weberian protection/extortion rackets (i.e., global and regional hegemonic nation-states) frequently instrumentalized to exclusively benefit certain transnational oligarchic interests.

Thanks for the belly-laugh! :)

BTW, it wasn’t more than a few weeks ago that Al-juliani and HTS were using force to put down popular demonstrations in Idlib against them. Just like a modern Democrat mayor, but a long ways from Mister Jefferson.