Moscow (AFP) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned on Monday that the world has reached a "dangerous point" as tensions between Russia and the United States spike over the Syria conflict. 

Relations between Moscow and Washington -- already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict -- have soured further in recent days as the United States pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks.

The Kremlin has suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.

"I think the world has reached a dangerous point," Gorbachev, 85, told state news agency RIA Novosti.

"I don't want to give any concrete prescriptions but I do want to say that this needs to stop. We need to renew dialogue. Stopping it was the biggest mistake."

As the last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev oversaw an easing of decades of tensions with the West that helped to end the Cold War.

He signed several landmark nuclear disarmament deals with Washington aimed at defusing the standoff between the two superpowers. 

"It is necessary to return to the main priorities. These are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of an environmental disaster," he said.  

"Compared to these challenges, all the rest slips into the background."

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An activist organization opposed to ISIS called out US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday for saying during the previous night's presidential debate that Syrian President Bashar Assad was focused on fighting ISIS and other terrorist groups in the country.

"I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS," Trump said while debating Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

While Assad's forces do target ISIS and other terrorist groups occasionally, their real focus has been wiping out the moderate opposition groups.

ISIS and Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria also oppose the Assad regime, but because they don't have legitimacy in the West they pose less of a threat to Assad on the international stage than the more moderate rebels.

And Syrian civilians generally regard the Assad regime as their greatest enemy, since his forces have killed more civilians than any terrorist group in Syria.

The activist group, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which draws its name from the Syrian city that became ISIS' de facto capital, explained the holes in Trump's statement in a series of tweets:

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently is an activist group that opposes both Assad and ISIS. Its citizen journalists have exposed the terrorist group's human-rights abuses in Syria.

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LONDON (Reuters) - A senior British lawmaker has accused Russia of targeting civilians in Syria in the same way the Nazis behaved at Guernica during the Spanish civil war of the 1930s.

Andrew Mitchell, a lawmaker in Prime Minister Theresa May's ruling Conservatives and a former Secretary of State for International Development, said an attack last month on a United Nations relief convoy near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was a war crime committed by Russian forces.

Some 20 people were killed in the attack on the U.N. and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy and the United States blamed two Russian warplanes which it said were in the skies above the area at the time of the incident.

Moscow rejects the accusations saying it only targets militants and accuses the West of being responsible for the crisis in Syria.

"When it comes to incendiary weapons and munitions such as bunker buster bombs and cluster bombs, the U.N. makes it clear that the systematic use of such indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas amounts to a war crime," Mitchell told parliament late on Monday.

"We are witnessing events that match the behavior of the Nazi regime in Guernica in Spain," he said referring to the destruction of the Spanish town in 1937 by German aircraft from Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe. The bombing of the historic city became the subject of a famous painting by artist Pablo Picasso.

The British parliament is due to hold a three-hour debate on Tuesday about the humanitarian situation in Syria.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by Michael Holden)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin will not come to Paris next week after declining to meet President Francois Hollande only for talks on Syria, a source in Hollande's office said, the latest deterioration in ties between Moscow and the West.

French officials have been grappling for ways to put new pressure on Russia after Moscow vetoed a French-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria. Their growing anger at events in the rebel-held areas of Aleppo had led them to reconsider whether to host Putin on Oct. 19.

"There were contacts between the Kremlin and the Elysee this morning to offer to Putin a working visit on Syria, but excluding all other events that President Hollande could have taken part in," the source said.

"In response to this proposal, Russia has just indicated that it wants to postpone the visit planned on Oct. 19."

The Russian leader was scheduled to inaugurate a new Russian Orthodox cathedral and visit a Russian art exhibition in the French capital.

While France has said it is vital to keep dialogue going with Moscow and not cut ties, events in Syria have damaged their relations with the two parties supporting opposite sides in the conflict.

France's foreign minister said on Monday his diplomats were working to find a way for the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to launch an investigation into war crimes it says have been committed by Syrian and Russian forces in eastern Aleppo.

Diplomats have also said Paris was leading discussions on whether to impose new European Union sanctions on Russia specifically over Syria, where Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad in the five-year-old war.

Earlier on Tuesday, Russia's ambassador to France Alexander Orlov had said that Putin still wanted to come to France on Oct. 19.

"Of course he still wants to come to Paris," Alexander Orlov told Europe 1 radio. "I think dialogue needs to continue and we are here to talk especially in difficult moments.

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Russia’s heavy-handed conduct in the escalating conflict in Syria is a humanitarian disaster; maybe even a war crime. But it also sheds light on Moscow’s perspective on warfighting, its military capabilities, and its sense of threat. What to the West is a troubling regional conflict is, when seen from the Kremlin, a critical battle in a global conflict of existential significance.

The old ultraviolence

The approach Moscow and Damascus have taken to seizing eastern Aleppo in particular has horrified a West which has long held a view of war in which civilian casualties ought to be avoided at best, minimised at worst. The shock is not so much that the Russians are not making any efforts at sparing the innocent, but rather that they seem to be going out of their way to spread hardship, misery and mayhem, targeting aid convoys, hospitals and other basics of survival.

This should not necessarily surprise. Moscow’s methods in Aleppo are reminiscent of the devastation of Grozny in the Second Chechen War – the one fought on Putin’s watch – and even some phases of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when observers dubbed Moscow’s strategy “migratory genocide.”

But it is not inhumanity for its own sake; what is morally abhorrent may be tactically good sense. From Moscow’s perspective, a deserted and rubbled eastern Aleppo represents a victory. And its experiences have taught it that any political damage suffered today will matter little tomorrow; that the West will forgive and forget quickly enough when a new crisis emerges and it needs Moscow’s assistance. To the Kremlin, everyone is a pragmatist, and the West’s loud complaints about its methods are simply rhetorical gestures, devoid of true intent.

Brutality out of weakness

The tactics used in Syria also reflect the limits of Russia’s military capacities: the level of violence deployed reflects a lack of options as much as anything else. While Moscow’s initial deployment to Syria took the world by surprise for the efficiency with which it was conducted, it has become increasingly mired in this conflict.

Russia set out to prevent the potential collapse of the Assad regime through a display of “shock and awe” firepower intended to reverse the rebels’ momentum and reassure Syrian elites. Moscow’s big fear was a re-run of the collapse of the Najibullah government left in Kabul after the Soviets left: a tough, seemingly stable regime that collapsed suddenly once defections began. It was also, perhaps even primarily, intended to force Washington to take Moscow seriously and stop trying to isolate it diplomatically.

That kind of demonstrative intervention can be done by long-range firepower, but wars are won by the ‘Poor Bloody Infantry,’ not artillery and airpower. And despite the deployment of Russian mercenaries from what is clearly a front organisation, ChVK Wagner, and a few Spetsnaz commandos, Moscow simply lacks the capacity to send appreciable ground forces to Syria.

Its armed forces number some 922,000, but the Ground Forces only represent around 300,000 of these. And around half of these are conscripts, prohibited from being deployed into combat other than in times of formal war. Moreover, given that at least 40,000 soldiers are purportedly engaged in Crimea and the Donbas, that others need to be stationed in the turbulent North Caucasus and scattered along Russia’s lengthy border, and the need to rotate forces which have seen action, it is clear that Russia does not have enough good soldiers to mount a serious ground campaign in Syria.

It also lacks the political support for such an exercise: Russians do not care that much about the Donbas, let alone distant Syria. The very need for the Wagner front organisation demonstrates that Moscow cannot afford a high tally of official casualties.

The Motherland mobilised

More broadly, Russia’s approach to Syria connects with a wider trend in Russian military thinking, the central importance of national mobilisation. Andrew Monahan has argued that, facing what seems to be a future of increasing threats, the Kremlin is moving forward with “efforts to move the country on to a permanent war footing.” On one level, this simply means a continued emphasis on guns over butter. To this end, witness the Ministry of Finance’s recent decision to add 679 billion rubles ($10 billion) to the 2016 defence budget, while cutting welfare spending by 375 billion rubles ($6 billion).

However, it is broader than that: It implies a securitisation of the whole state. In an age of “non-kinetic conflict,” when the struggle between nations is as often in the battlefield of economics and information, nothing is not a security asset. A snap military exercise in August, for example, also involved the Central Bank and the Ministries of Communications, Finance, and Industry and Trade. While soldiers were being drilled and tested on their ability to fight their battles, so were Russia’s bankers and bureaucrats.

As became clear when I was researching the ECFR report Putin’s Hydra: inside Russia’s intelligence services, there is a pervasive belief in Russia’s security community not only that Russia already is at war – an undeclared, largely covert one – with the West, but that it had been so long before Moscow even realised it. The Arab Spring, the Colour Revolutions in other post-Soviet countries, the spread of Western ideas and influences, all come together in a lurid fantasy of a conflict that Moscow must scramble to resist on every front, from the geopolitical to the ideological.

Thus, the unrestrained approach Russia has adopted in Syria is also a response to the perceived sense that this is not a local conflict which can be dealt with through limited measures, but rather one skirmish in a wider struggle of existential significance to the Motherland. All nations, after all, are capable of the most brutal of measures if they truly believe themselves at direct and serious risk.

The Syrian prism

Russia’s gratuitously brutal tactics in Syria are thus symptoms of three wider issues. Moscow is already on a war footing, seeing itself assailed both by a rising tide of instability in the world and also a covert regime change campaign from the West. In these circumstances, winning is more important than how that win is won, and the constraints are merely practical. It knows that brutal methods can work, especially in a brutal war, and it continues to believe that the West’s outrage is either hypocritical theatrics or else a passing phase that will soon enough give way to Realpolitik.

Finally, its military capabilities are far less impressive than its geopolitical aspirations. It is locked into an open-ended military, political, and economic struggle in the Donbas. It has missed its window to neatly withdraw from Syria and seems likely to be stuck there until the Assad regime falls or reaches some kind of acceptable political deal with a substantial portion of the rebels – both outcomes currently well over the horizon.

It is not that there is a string of “new Syrias” on the horizon, not least as an over-stretched Kremlin cannot afford them. Moscow has acted reactively throughout, and largely in keeping with its own logic, even though the reason why Putin chose not to take the opportunity to withdraw in March is still unclear. Nonetheless, the wartime mentality increasingly informing Russian policy is becoming something of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The decision to abandon the ceasefire in Syria and then veto the UN resolution to stop further airstrikes on Aleppo, along with this weekend’s deployment of SS-26 Iskander-M missiles to Kaliningrad and unilateral suspension of nuclear accords with the USA, fit within a wider picture of “aggressive defensiveness.” Russia feels itself under threat and seeks to strengthen its position pre-emptively, not least before January and the expected inauguration of Hilary Clinton, expected to be a much more hawkish interlocutor. Feeling under threat, the Kremlin seeks to collect bargaining chips and to look intimidatingly confident.

The Kremlin is a rational actor, but basing its decisions on inaccurate information and a dangerously misconceived view of the world. At present the Syrians and Ukrainian are paying the price for this worldview. 

Read more on: Wider Europe,Russia,The Middle East and North Africa,Syria / Iraq / Lebanon,Syria

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On Tuesday morning, Russian jets resumed their air strikes on the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo after a few days of relative calm.

A large-scale humanitarian crisis has been unfolding for months in Syria's largest city as civilians are trapped in the besieged town, that has been bombed on an almost daily basis for months now, with no way to escape.

"They have been abandoned by the world – the whole world is witnessing the city being destroyed, but nobody is doing anything to stop it," Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) head of mission Carlos Francisco said in a statement. "This is the feeling shared by the 35 doctors left in east Aleppo."

The alarm bell about the situation in the Aleppo is once again being sounded by MSF as over 250,000 people "with no possibility of help or escape," who are constantly bombarded, are now left with 35 doctors as hospitals have consistently been hit during the air strikes — enduring 23 attacks over the last four months.

"First, the surrounding areas were hit, then the roads leading into the city, then hospitals, water supplies, residential neighbourhoods, rescuers' equipment. We are talking about a city exhausted by five years of war, which has received no aid since July, when the siege began – a city that is being devastated, flattened, in front of our eyes," Francisco said.

The city, divided between the eastern part controlled by rebels fighting the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad and the western part controlled by the Syrian army, has been a focal point of the Syrian war as Assad vowed to take back the entire city from the rebels.

The civil war in Syria has been raging on since 2011, and has so far caused the internal displacement of over 8 million people, sent over 4.5 million people fleeing the country, and lead to the death of over 400,000 people.

The latest US-Russian initiative to bring about peace in Syria the collapsed last week after one of the most deadly bombings of Aleppo yet.

US Secretary of State, John Kerry, added that the attacks on hospitals in Aleppo were now "way beyond" accidental and last week, the US and French governments called for a war crime investigation of Russian and Syrian air strikes in Aleppo.

Francisco, who has coordinated MSF's Syria projects since January 2015, is based in southern Turkey and in daily contact with the doctors left in Aleppo. He has found that the situation in east Aleppo has hugely deteriorated over the last three weeks, and for more than a year now, MSF has been barred from entering the city.

"What is clear is that we have lost the capacity to help in any major way," Francisco said. "Now, they are basically in need of everything. They are telling us, ‘Send whatever you have – sterile gauze or non-sterile – we’ll take anything, we need everything’. But in these circumstances, we are powerless to help them."

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Relations between the US and Russia took a nosedive last Monday when Washington announced it would be suspending its negotiations with Moscow over its refusal to halt airstrikes on Syria's largest city, Aleppo.

That was only the start of a long week — one that saw the two countries entering their lowest point in relations since the end of the Cold War.

After reports emerged last Tuesday that the US was considering launching airstrikes on the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Russia deployed surface-to-air missiles to its naval base in Tartus on Syria's western coast and suspended a nuclear and energy-related research pact with the US.

Then on Thursday, Russia's ministry of defense released a statement implying that US warplanes could be shot down without warning if they were to attack Syrian army positions. On Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry responded by calling for a war-crimes investigation into Russia and Assad's scorched-earth offensive on Aleppo, which has killed hundreds of civilians since late last month.

The tumultuous week culminated with an unprecedented move: On Friday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a statement that for the first time publicly accused Russia of orchestrating a series of cyberattacks "intended to interfere with the US election process."

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has accused the Russian government of trying to tip the scales in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has been more sympathetic to Russia on the campaign trail.

Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, condemned the accusation on Saturday, saying the current US administration was "not averse to using dirty tricks" to stir up "unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria."

Later that day, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution proposed by France and backed by the US to immediately halt the bombing in Aleppo, calling it a ploy to protect former Al Qaeda fighters operating in and around the city.

On Tuesday, Retired Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky told the BBC that "as far as Russia sees it, as Putin sees it, it is full-scale confrontation [with the US] on all fronts."

"It's extremely worrisome," retired Adm. James Stavridis, the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, told NBC News last week of the developments.

"The trend lines are very bad," he added. "We're not in a new Cold War, but we're edging close to one."

'Denial of reality isn't a useful policy option'

Experts are divided over what options Washington has now that its relationship with Moscow has reached its lowest point in decades — especially since it's unlikely that Russia, having successfully edged the US out of the Middle East and been credited with hacking into US political organizations, will ease up anytime soon.

Adding to the tension is NATO's buildup of combat battalions on Russia's doorstep in the Baltic countries and Poland. Russia has responded to the increased NATO presence by assembling troops and bases around Kaliningrad, which lies between Poland and Lithuania.

Among the highest-profile politicians arguing for a more robust response to Russian aggression is Trump's running mate, Mike Pence.

Pence called Russian President Vladimir Putin "small and bullying" in last week's vice-presidential debate, and he said he supported US military action to end Russia's bombardment of Aleppo. In an extraordinary moment in Sunday night's presidential debate, however, Trump said he "disagreed" with his running mate on Syria policy.

In any case, Ian Bremmer, the president of the political risk firm Eurasia Group, has not expressed optimism about Washington's recourse.

US-Russian relations "are now at the worst level since Andropov," Bremmer told Business Insider in an email, referring to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, the general secretary of the Communist Party who was instrumental in the Russians' 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

"On Syria, the US doesn't have realistic options," Bremmer said. "The Russia talks didn't just fail, they failed immediately and completely, with brutal attacks against civilians. Assad isn't going anywhere, and the Russians (and Iran) are willing to ensure they get to determine the outcomes. That's not easy for the US to accept, but denial of reality isn't a useful policy option."

In an op-ed article for The Wall Street Journal last week, US Sen. John McCain of Arizona called Kerry's suspension of talks with Russia over Syria "meaningless." He advocated more forceful diplomacy backed by "strength."

"Any alternative approach must begin with grounding Mr. Assad's air power," McCain wrote. "The US and its coalition partners must issue an ultimatum to Mr. Assad — stop flying or lose your aircraft — and be prepared to follow through."

He added that the US should hold Russian aircraft "at greater risk," and step up its support to vetted Syrian opposition groups that are fighting the regime.

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If the study of geopolitics focuses on the structural forces shaping the international system, then domestic elections only rarely matter. Leaders tend to bend to their environment, not the other way around. And yet in the final months of 2016 the United States, still the world's only superpower, will choose a president in an election that will shape U.S. foreign policy more than usual.

This is because of the stark differences between the approaches of the two candidates. Both agree that the United States should preserve its hegemony, but they disagree on how to go about it. One argues that the United States should play the role it inherited after World War II, one in which U.S. power is more effectively wielded through alliances, global trade linkages and selective interventions.

The other argues for self-reliance over globalism, the idea that the United States and its allies should defend their own interests instead of unnecessarily handcuffing themselves to security umbrellas and global trade pacts.

Our purpose is not to predict the result of the election but to forecast how it could alter the behaviors of other states. For those accustomed to living under U.S. scrutiny, political distraction in Washington can create opportunities. North Korea, for example, has already accelerated its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon and delivery system, and in the next three months it will have a chance to try to complete the final phases of its test cycle without risking pre-emptive military action.

Regional security concerns over North Korea, meanwhile, will bring Japan, China and South Korea into much more active dialogue, even as tensions escalate with Japan's increased involvement in the South China Sea dispute.

For others, like Russia, the remaining three months of the year will be spent setting up negotiations with the next U.S. president. With Barack Obama on his way out, leaders in Russia understand there is little chance of striking an 11th-hour bargain in Ukraine or in Syria.

But there is still plenty of work for Russia to do in both theaters. In Ukraine, Russia will incrementally work to de-escalate the conflict in the east while lobbying the Europeans to ease up on sanctions. Moscow will expect political concessions from Ukraine in return, but since Kiev is not under enough pressure to capitulate, talks will stall again.

In Syria, on the other hand, Russia will rely more on military tactics than diplomatic wrangling to strengthen its negotiating position. Since the beginning of the year, Russia has tried to show that it can be both a disruptive and cooperative force on the battlefield. But the limitations in enforcing a cease-fire have been exposed, and the United States will not be in the mood for creative bargaining in the final months of Obama's presidency.

The United States will forge ahead with offensives against the Islamic State in Mosul and Raqqa, focusing its efforts on managing competing forces on the ground and maintaining at least a minimal level of cooperation with Russia to de-conflict the Syrian battlefield. Russia, meanwhile, will concentrate its efforts on reinforcing the loyalist offensive against Aleppo to improve its leverage on the battlefield and thus its negotiating position with the next U.S. president.

As the United States reinforces Sunni rebels in Syria and deprioritizes its dialogue with Moscow, the potential for clashes will rise going into the fourth quarter. Complicating the situation is Turkey, which now has boots on the ground in Syria. As it pushes farther south, it will have to rely on U.S. protective cover to avoid colliding with Russia. But trouble between the United States and Russia means less insulation for the Turks.

Then there are Washington's restless allies, watching and waiting to see if they can continue to count on U.S. commitments to protect them from their stronger neighbors. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership on ice and with U.S. reliability in question overall, Southeast Asian partners like the Philippines and Vietnam will hedge their bets by cooperating with Beijing on economic issues, if only to ease tensions on security issues.

European divisions will deepen as political factions throughout the Continent call for changes to the EU treaty to assert their national rights. Smaller groupings will band together more tightly, particularly the Visegrad Group and the Baltics, as they try to hold their ground against Russia and await clarity from the United States on its security commitments.

At the same time, Gulf allies in the Middle East will take advantage of friction between the United States and Russia to reinforce their Sunni proxies in their regional competition with Iran.

But proxy wars need funding. Though they have taken incremental steps to cut government expenditures like public sector salaries, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have spent the year waiting to see if the oil market would rebalance itself. Moving into the fourth quarter, however, the Saudis are monitoring the potential for additional oil to come online in Libya, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan.

If Riyadh believes prices will decline further, it will consider cutting production to match pre-summer surge levels, using the opportunity to try to persuade others to agree to a production freeze. But even if its members do reach an agreement, OPEC still faces severe limitations in influencing the price of crude so long as U.S. producers are able to respond quickly to even modest price increases.

As for the rest of the world, poor economic conditions will make for messy politics this quarter. The global economy will remain in the quagmire it's been in for the past nine months as markets wait for a interest rate hike form the U.S. Federal Reserve, however modest it may be. Uncertainty around the U.S. election will forestall trade negotiations and possibly lead to currency fluctuations for countries that trade heavily with the United States, with Mexico in the spotlight.

An aversion to risk could also result in sell-offs of more precarious stocks, leaving already stressed banks even more exposed in a world of low, and in some cases negative, interest rates. As Japan's monetary authorities try to incrementally repair bank balance sheets through new and untested methods, Europe will be particularly skittish this quarter as political instability in Italy threatens to draw scrutiny on troubled banks throughout the eurozone.

That's not to say the next U.S. president will have to deal with a global banking panic, but it is to say that whoever wins the election will have a hard time finding the political consensus needed to manage a more enduring and uncomfortable structural shift in the global economy.

Read the complete Stratfor.com forecast, with extended forecasts by region at the following links:

Europe: European divisions will deepen as calls for treaty changes grow.

Eurasia: Russia and the United States are on a path toward escalation.

Middle East and North Africa: Foreign interests will diverge more markedly in Syria.

East Asia: As the TPP stalls, tensions will rise in the South China Sea.

Latin America: Will Venezuela's political opposition be able to hold a recall vote by the year's end?

South Asia: Leaders in India and Pakistan will use unrest in Kashmir to their advantage.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Economic issues will prevent Nigeria from addressing other areas of need.

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A full year after Russia stepped into the Syrian quagmire on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Moscow has come to rival and challenge the US and NATO in virtually every arena possible.

Here's a quick glance at what Russia has accomplished just in the last month or so:

• Likely bombed a UN humanitarian aide convoy trying to provide relief to besieged Aleppo, derailing joint US and Russian peace talks.
• Continued to strike civilian targets in Syria — using chemical weapons, experts have said — exacerbating the refugee crisis in Europe. US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove has even gone as far as to accuse Russia of purposefully attacking civilians, "weaponizing" the flow of refugees into Europe.
• Sent nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad, Russia's European enclave.
• Suspended an agreement with the US to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium because of what Russia viewed as "unfriendly" acts by the US.
• Sent additional missile defense batteries to Syria, and even threatened to shoot down US planes flying in Syria without warning.
• Participated in military drills with China in the South China Sea, where China has illegally annexed and militarized artificial islands.
• Likely hacked the Democratic National Committee and other US government agencies and leaked the information to the public in an effort to delegitimize the US's upcoming election and destabilize the country at large.

Without a doubt, relations between Russia and the West have reached their lowest point since the height of the Cold War.

Retired Russian Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky told the BBC that for its part, Russia sees the West as the belligerent party, citing sanctions against Russia as well as barring the Russian Paralympic team from the Rio Olympics for well-documented and state-sponsored doping as Western aggression against Russia.

"Of course there is a reaction. As far as Russia sees it, as Putin sees it, it is full-scale confrontation on all fronts. If you want a confrontation, you'll get one," Buzhinsky told the BBC. "But it won't be a confrontation that doesn't harm the interests of the United States. You want a confrontation, you'll get one everywhere."

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Beirut (AFP) - At least eight civilians were killed on Tuesday in the heaviest Russian bombardment in days of rebel-held areas of Syria's second city Aleppo, a monitoring group said. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight civilians were killed in the Bustan al-Basha and Fardos districts in the east of the city. 

"This is the heaviest Russian bombardment since the Syrian regime announced it would reduce the bombardment" on October 5, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

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Islamic State militants in northern Syria are putting up "stiff resistance" to attacks by Turkish-backed rebel fighters, Turkey's military said on Wednesday, almost two months after it launched an incursion to drive them away from its border.

Supported by Turkish tanks and air strikes, the rebels have been pushing toward the Islamic State stronghold of Dabiq. Clashes and air strikes over the past 24 hours have killed 47 jihadists, the military said in a statement.

"Due to stiff resistance of the Daesh (Islamic State) terror group, progress could not be achieved in an attack launched to take four settlements," it said, naming the areas east of the town of Azaz as Kafrah, Suran, Ihtimalat and Duvaybik.

However, the operation to drive the jihadists away from the Turkish border, dubbed "Euphrates Shield", has allowed Turkish-backed rebels to take control of about 1,100 square km (425 square miles) of territory, the military said.

A Syrian rebel commander told Reuters the rebels were about 4 km (2.5 miles) from Dabiq. He said capturing Dabiq and the nearby town of Suran would spell the end of Islamic State's presence in the northern Aleppo countryside.

A planned major offensive on the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab, southeast of Dabiq and an important strategic target, depended on how quickly rebels could take control of the roughly 35 km (22 miles) in between the two cities, he said.

Al-Bab is also a strategic target for the Kurdish YPG militia, which, like the rebels, is battling Islamic State in northern Syria but is viewed as a hostile force by Turkey.

In a daily round-up on Euphrates Shield's 50th day, the Turkish army said 19 Islamic State fighters had been "neutralized" in clashes and eight rebels were killed. Twenty-two rebels were wounded and Turkish forces suffered no losses.

Turkish warplanes destroyed five buildings used by Islamic State fighters, while U.S.-led coalition jets "neutralized" 28 of the jihadists and destroyed three buildings, it said.

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GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official repeated his call on Wednesday for a dilution of big powers' United Nations veto in cases of serious war crimes, but he gave little support to Syrian opposition hopes of strong-arming Russia over eastern Aleppo.

Russian war planes have bombed rebel-held eastern Aleppo in the past two weeks in support of Syrian and allied ground forces who are besieging about 275,000 civilians. The United Nations says hospitals have been hit and more than 400 people killed.

Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said last week that Security Council veto powers should be curbed to help resolve the situation and bring Syria under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

France and Britain back the proposal, Zeid told a news briefing in Geneva on Wednesday, adding: "We would hope that the United States, Russia and China would likewise follow."

But he appeared to give short shrift to a proposal for the wider membership of the U.N. General Assembly to take the matter into its own hands and override the 15-nation Security Council, under a U.N. resolution dating from 1950, known as "Uniting for Peace".

The opposition Syrian Coalition said on Tuesday its vice-president Abdul Ahad Steifo would ask friendly countries to press for action under "Uniting for Peace", which says the General Assembly can step in if disagreements among the veto-wielding powers mean they fail to maintain international peace.

"It's not strictly a human rights issue as such," Zeid said. "The mechanism was used first in respect of Korea and has been used in respect of the situation in Palestine many times, so it is a device well known to diplomats in New York.

"Our preference would still be that the permanent members of the Security Council voluntarily desist from using the veto (when there is evidence of serious violations of international law)", he said.

Zeid asked whose security was being protected by the Security Council and, recalling his U.N. experience in the war in former Yugoslavia, said the world could not continue every decade or so to find itself in a situation where a densely packed urban population was under bombardment.

"You cannot believe this is happening, and the fear and the horror of the people in those circumstances is hardly possible in the 21st century... How could we still be doing this? There are rules," he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; writing by Tom Miles, editing by Angus MacSwan)

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In a bold faced power move, Russia just moved additional missile defense batteries to Syria and issued a thinly veiled threat that it would shoot down any US or coalition aircraft that tried to bomb Syrian regime targets without warning.

This step, just days after US and Russian bilateral negotiations for a ceasefire fell through, shows the depth of Russia's commitment to Syrian President Assad, who has shown a ferocious willingness to use chemical and banned weapons against his own people since the war started in 2011. 

But the Russian S-300 and S-400 missile defense batteries pose a serious question about US and coalition military capabilities versus the Russians.

Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, went as far as to say that "all the illusions of amateurs about the existence of 'invisible' jets will face a disappointing reality," referring to the US's fifth generation stealth aircraft, the F-22 and F-35.

While the US fields the greatest Air Force in the world, the capabilities of Russia's S-300 and S-400 air defense systems in Syria represent a very real challenge to the US's ability to operate in those zones without being shot down.

Dr. Igor Sutyagin of the Royal United Services Institute, an expert on Russian missile defense systems and strategic armaments, told Business Insider that in this case at least, Russia is correct.

"Konashenkov is absolutely right – ‘stealth’ as ‘invisibility’ is just amateurs’ invention, not a technical term."

However, according to Sutyagin, some of the Russian capabilities also fall in the category of speculation rather than hard capability. 

For instance, as advanced as Russian surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems are, and they are really quite advanced, they still face very real limitations. 

Russian "air defense systems are designed to intercept high flying targets at a maximum range of  about 250 miles," said Sutyagin. While this does pose a threat to US and coalition aircraft operating normally in the region, the missile defense can be outfoxed, as they less optimal against low flying planes or missiles.

Even though the Russian systems have great radar range and capabilities, in the real world obstacles abound, and that makes it very hard to get a clear picture of real world air spaces.  

The Russian missile defense systems sit on trucks, ready to be positioned wherever needed in a specific region. Some reports indicate that Russian crews can get the missile battery up and running within 5 minutes of parking the truck. Additionally, the mobile missile batteries present an ever changing target, and a puzzle that incoming aircraft must solve anew each time they enter the air space.

But they battery is still just a truck on the ground. Parking it on a hilltop makes it visible. Parking it in a valley severely limits the range due to natural obstacles. So just as the US fantasy of "invisible jets" doesn't completely pan out when the rubber hits the road, neither does the Russian fantasy of a 250 mile air defense zone. 

Indeed to flesh out this idea of the Russians, they'd need to operate Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACs), or planes that carry large radars and can survey battle spaces free from obstructions on the ground, which Sutyagin says Moscow does not currently have in Syria. 

But who would come out on top?

According to Sutyagin, stealth US planes like the B-2, F-22, and F-35 could knock out Russian SAM sites in Syria, but not without a fight.

"Yeah they can do it. In theory they can do it because they will be launching stand off weapons," said Sutyagin, referring to long range missiles as "standoff weapons."

"The tactics of these low visibility planes as they were designed originally was to use the fact that detection range was decreased so you create some gaps in radar range and then you approach through gap and launch standoff weapons," said Sutyagin.

At this point, Russia's "defenses will inevitably detect it, but maybe too late," said Sutyagin, who emphasized that firing a missile doesn't always mean a hit, and detecting a missile doesn't always mean an intercept.

"There is no 100% reliability, but still it will be much more difficult" for Russian SAM sites to intercept missiles fired from US stealth aircraft that can get up close and personal and locate the site first.  "If the standoff weapon is also low visibility," the chances only improve, according to Sutyagin.

Additionally, Russian SAM sites in Syria have a limited magazine capacity. 

"One air defense battalion with an S-300 has 32 missiles. They will fire these against 16 targets (maybe against cruise missiles they would fire a one-to-one ratio) but to prevent the target from evading you always launch two... but what if there are 50 targets?"

This limitation explains why Russia deployed the S-300 battery to Syria when they already have the more advanced S-400 stationed there. 

According to Sutyagin, it takes "40-50 minutes to reload launchers." The SAM sites are then unarmed, with their positions exposed and they're "not well prepared to meet another threat."

What it comes down to

So the US could overwhelm Russian defenses. Or Russia could shoot down US fifth-generation aircraft over Syria. What it comes down to, according to Sutyagin, is training.

Sutyagin says that overall, the situation is "very complicated" and that there is "no easy solution to suppress air defense, but there are opportunities."

Each combat scenario brings unique challenges and opportunities that may benefit one side or another. Generally, there is reason to believe that the pilots of US fifth-generation aircraft are among the best in the world, and that they would have the edge in almost every situation.

Indeed, Sutyagin says that the US's airborne capabilities put them in a better situation than the US was in during Vietnam, when Russian SAM sites shot down many US planes. 

Though the details of the how US F-22 Raptor pilots would engage an enemy SAM site are classified, a pilot with the program recently told National Interest's Dave Majumdar that the F-22 pilots are confident they could prevail. 

But jets and SAM sites fight battles on air, over seas, and on land — not on paper. 

"If American pilots will be not experienced in their fifth-gens, they will be shot down. If they are brilliant, operationally, tactically brilliant, they will defeat them," concluded Sutyagin.

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French accusations that the bombing of Aleppo amounts to war crimes are rhetoric, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with French television TF1 aired on Wednesday.

"It's political rhetoric that doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't take account of the reality in Syria," Putin said in comments translated into French and recorded on Tuesday.

"I am deeply convinced that it's our Western partners, and especially the United States, that are responsible for the situation in the region in general and Syria in particular," he said.

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Egypt's armed forces will hold joint military exercises with their Russian counterparts on Egyptian soil for the first time from Oct. 15-26, Cairo's military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Days ago Egypt backed a Russian resolution in the U.N. Security Council on Syria that removed the demand for an end to air strikes on Aleppo stipulated in an alternative French resolution.

Both resolutions failed to pass but Egypt's support for the Russian measure put the North African country at odds with its key financial backer, Saudi Arabia, which has opposed Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The joint military training will include drills between Egyptian and Russian paratrooper units in the northwestern region of el-Alamein, Egyptian military spokesman Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said in a statement posted on the Egyptian military's official Facebook page.

Russia's Izvestia newspaper said Moscow was in talks to open an air base in Egypt, though Egypt's official Al Ahram newspaper quoted the presidential spokesman on Tuesday saying it would not allow foreign bases on its land.

Egypt is negotiating with Russia to restore flights to its Red Sea resorts, a year after the bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers back to St Petersburg.

Egypt is keen to restore tourism, a key earner of hard currency, which has been in decline since the 2011 uprising ushered in a period of political instability.

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A 22-year-old Syrian refugee arrested last weekend in Germany over suspicions that he was plotting to bomb Berlin airport has reportedly committed suicide, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel reports that the man, Jaber Albakr, had been under round-the-clock surveillance due to a high risk of suicide and hunger strike, so it was not immediately clear how he was able to kill himself.

Der Spiegel reports that Albakr hanged himself in his jail cell.

German police notified the public that they were looking for Albakr — a Syrian who had been granted entry into Germany in 2015 — on Saturday for amassing explosives in his apartment in the eastern town of Chemnitz.

Two other Syrian refugees who recognized him from photos on social media captured him and tied him up at their home until police arrived on the scene. 

"We succeeded in preventing a terrorist attack just minutes before midnight," Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic intelligence agency, told German broadcaster ZDF Police on Tuesday. Albakr had evidently been evading police capture since Saturday.

Germany's spy chief said on Tuesday that Albakr had ties to ISIS, but that has not yet been confirmed.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met on Monday for the second time since August to finalize a deal for an undersea gas pipeline and demonstrate renewed bilateral ties that could be used as a "trump card" against the US.

"Erdogan is flirting with Russia as a trump card against the US," Aykan Erdemir, a former member of Turkish parliament and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

Erdemir noted that Erdogan doesn't see the US as a partner in its battle against Turkey's domestic Kurdish insurgency, and still resents the US' support of Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkey views as a threat to its territorial sovereignty.

Erdogan is also still reeling from a failed coup in July, which he and his party have blamed on the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan on Wednesday accused the US of "sheltering the leader of the terrorist organization," warning that "very serious steps" would be taken if the 75-year old Turkish exile was not extradited immediately.

Moreover, Russia was quick to condemn the failed coup the night of the attempt and has been generally supportive of Erdogan's subsequent crackdown on the alleged coup plotters. The US and Europe, on the other hand, have criticized the extreme measures Erdogan has taken to purge Turkey of political dissidents and muzzle free speech.

"That Russia has not criticized Turkey for its unprecedentedly extensive purges post-July 15 makes deeper ties with Russia more attractive to Ankara," Middle East analyst Michael Koplow, policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

"Turkey perceives the West as having sold it out while Russia has unsurprisingly been more sympathetic to Turkey’s widening crackdown."

Still, many analysts say that the transformation of Erdogan and Putin's relationship underway is not in Turkey's best interests, politically or economically.

The long-delayed deal to construct a natural gas pipeline from Russia under Turkish waters in the Black Sea and into Europe is one example. The pipeline would be hugely beneficial to Russia, allowing Moscow to bypass Ukraine entirely and giving it a direct opening into the European market. Though it as the potential to give a boost to Turkey's economy, it's an expensive undertaking for Ankara with nowhere near the strategic value it holds for Russia.

"This whole Turkish Stream makes so little sense from a financial point of view that its political benefit becomes very questionable," Akin Unver, an assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul specializing in energy politics, said Tuesday. "In the last decade, Turkey's primary energy policy was diversification — away from Russia, and away from natural gas."

He continued:

"Turkey as an 'energy hub' was a romantic goal, but it was at least a good one. It made sense in terms of diversification of nearby sources. Now, as of 2016, Turkey has a new Russian pipeline, a 5% increase to its dependence on Russian gas, and a nuclear power plant built by Russia."

As such, the pipeline emerges looking almost like a favor from Erdogan to Putin in exchange for Russia's continued support of Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian tendencies — well-known to be the source of tension between Turkey and the West that Russia is happy to exploit.

"Ankara tried a similar strategy of flirting with Moscow back in the 1960s and 1970s, but those efforts always fell short of military cooperation, and were strictly limited to the economic field," Erdemir said. 

"It would be interesting to see whether under Erdogan's rule, Turkey becomes the first NATO country to 'defect' by building close political and military ties with Moscow."

Koplow, too, noted that while Turkey is still a NATO member and maintains deep trade relations with the US and the EU, "I don’t think we should be surprised to see Turkey moving closer to Russia given the more immediate benefits that Russia can deliver."

Putin 'continues to cash in'

Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, told Time that the warming ties "shouldn't be read as a "strategic realignment on the side of Turkey."

"It is much more an effort to eliminate the acrimonious state of the relationship following the plane incident,” Ulgen said. “Now the relationship stands on more firm ground, but again, both history but also the reality of Turkey’s relationship with Russia has amply demonstrated that there can be no real strategic realignment in Ankara and Moscow.”

Still, Russia gains a lot from the renewed friendship — arguably more than Turkey.

"Putin has detected Erdogan's weakness and desperation, and continues to cash in on it," said Erdemir, of the FDD.

The vulnerability stems from Turkey's perception of the US as working against its national security interests, and Erdogan's precarious position following July's coup attempt.

"Russia has been quick to take advantage of the tensions between Turkey and the West," strategic security firm The Soufan Group wrote on in a note to clients Wednesday.

"Furthermore, as tensions between the Turkish government and the [Kurdish] PKK broke into renewed conflict in the southeast over the summer, Russia arrested an arms-dealer in July who was allegedly delivering weapons to the PKK. On the domestic front, Turkey increasingly sees Russia as a security partner," the firm added.

Although Erdogan and Putin's goals have long been fundamentally divergent in Syria — Erdogan has been intent on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011, whereas Putin has been actively supporting him — Turkey's prioritization of its own national security has resulted in a notable softening of its anti-Assad stance, in large part because many of the Turkish generals leading its Syria policy were jailed following the coup attempt.

"In Syria, Turkey’s primary objective has quite clearly shifted from demanding that Assad go under all circumstances to stamping out any possibility of an autonomous Kurdish zone in Syria," Koplow noted.

On Monday, both Erdogan and Putin said they would continue to consult each other about their respective military operations in Syria, even after the US suspended its negotiations with Russia over Syria last Monday over its role in the relentless aerial bombardment of the city of Aleppo.

In any case, Erdemir said, "Moscow has made significant strategic gains since Turkey's downing of the Russian jet in November 2015"— and Putin has much to gain from strengthening his relationship with Erdogan at a time when Russian-US relations are at their lowest point since the Cold War. 

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Britain is looking at its military involvement in Syria but any action would need to be part of a coalition involving the United States and is not likely to happen soon, foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday.

The British government lost a 2013 parliamentary vote over plans to bomb the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but has been involved in bombing raids against Islamic State in Syria since winning the support of lawmakers last December.

"It is right now that we should be looking again at the more kinetic options, the military options," Johnson told a committee of lawmakers. "But we must be realistic about how these in fact work, and what is deliverable."

"We can't do anything without a coalition, without doing it with the Americans. I think we're still a pretty long day's march from getting there but that doesn't mean that discussions aren't going on, because they certainly are."

Prime Minister Theresa May's spokeswoman said no decisions had been made about Britain changing its approach in Syria, and the government was looking at a range of options as it seeks to help bring an end to the conflict in Syria.

"We need to think through carefully the consequences of any action," she said. "We are talking to partners about is there any more we can be doing to end this appalling conflict."

Renewed bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo has killed more than 150 people this week, rescue workers said, as the Syrian government steps up its Russian-backed offensive to take the whole city. Syria and Russia blame their foes for breaking a ceasefire and say they target only militants in the city.

Johnson, who described Russia's actions in Syria as barbaric, also said it was important not to raise false hopes over the idea of a no fly zone over parts of Syria to prevent the Russian and Syrian government air strikes on Aleppo.

"We know the difficulties and implications of a no fly zone or a no bombing zone," he said. "But if there is more that we can reasonably and practically do together with our allies, then of course we should consider those measures."

Russia said it would welcome Britain's involvement if it targeted terrorists rather than Assad's forces.

Johnson, who said another option was to intensify sanctions on key players in Assad's administration, said he would host a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and European foreign ministers in London on Sunday to discuss the situation.

Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are due to attend a meeting in Lausanne on Saturday for talks on Syria.

(Additional reporting by William James; Editing by Alison Williams)

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LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - EU foreign ministers will accuse the Syrian government and its allies of using disproportionate violence in its assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo that "may amount to war crimes", according to a draft statement ahead of their meeting on Monday.

France and the United States have already said the Aleppo offensive, which has included air strikes on hospitals, includes war crimes for which Syria and Russia are responsible.

European Union foreign ministers will meet in Luxemburg to discuss Syria and a draft joint statement said they would "strongly condemn the excessive and disproportionate attacks by the regime and its allies."

"Since the beginning of the offensive by the regime and its allies, the intensity and scale of aerial bombardment of eastern Aleppo is clearly disproportionate," said the document, seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Air strikes on hospitals and the use of barrel and cluster bombs, as well as chemical weapons, were "causing widespread civilian casualties ... and may amount to war crimes."

Paris and London are leading EU efforts to impose more sanctions on Syrians close to President Bashar al-Assad in response to the devastating bombing of besieged east Aleppo, where more than 250,000 people are trapped.

"The use of starvation of civilians through the besiegement of populated areas, as a tactic of war, and forced population transfers are contrary to international law," the draft said.

"The EU recalls its conviction that the situation in Syria should be sent to the International Criminal Court ... In this context, the EU will continue its policy of imposing restrictive measures against the Syrian regime and its supporters as long as the repression continues."

Russia and Iran are fighting on Damascus' side in Syria but, notably, the EU document does not specifically mention Moscow as the bloc is wary of enraging the Kremlin even further.

The EU and Russia also back opposite sides in the conflict in Ukraine.

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U.S. President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet on Friday to consider their military and other options in Syria as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, U.S. officials said.

Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Islamic State, the officials told Reuters.

One set of options includes direct U.S. military action such as air strikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots or radar and anti-aircraft bases, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

This official said one danger of such action is that Russian and Syrian forces are often co-mingled, raising the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia that Obama has been at pains to avoid.

U.S. officials said they consider it unlikely that Obama will order U.S. air strikes on Syrian government targets, and they stressed that he may not make any decisions at the planned meeting of his National Security Council.

  One alternative, U.S. officials said, is allowing allies to provide U.S.-vetted rebels with more sophisticated weapons, although not shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which Washington fears could be used against Western airliners.

The White House declined to comment.

Friday's planned meeting is the latest in a long series of internal debates about what, if anything, to do to end a 5-1/2 year civil war that has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced half the country's population.

The ultimate aim of any new action could be to bolster the battered moderate rebels so they can weather what is now widely seen as the inevitable fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo to the forces of Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

It also might temper a sense of betrayal among moderate rebels who feel Obama encouraged their uprising by calling for Assad to go but then abandoned them, failing even to enforce his own "red line" against Syria's use of chemical weapons.

This, in turn, might deter them from migrating to Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front, which the United States regards as Syria's al Qaeda branch. The group in July said it had cut ties to al Qaeda and changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.

Another try at diplomacy

The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers will meet in Lausanne, Switzerland on Saturday to resume their failed effort to find a diplomatic solution, possibly joined by their counterparts from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but U.S. officials voiced little hope for success.

Friday's planned meeting at the White House and the session in Lausanne occur as Obama, with just 100 days left in office, faces other decisions about whether to deepen U.S. military involvement in the Middle East -- notably in Yemen and Iraq -- a stance he opposed when he won the White House in 2008.

Earlier Thursday the United States launched cruise missiles at three coastal radar sites in areas of Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi forces, retaliating after failed missile attacks this week on a U.S. Navy destroyer, U.S. officials said.

In Iraq, U.S. officials are debating whether government forces will need more U.S. support both during and after their campaign to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital in the country.

Some officials argue the Iraqis now cannot retake the city without significant help from Kurdish peshmerga forces, as well as Sunni and Shi'ite militias, and that their participation could trigger religious and ethnic conflict in the city.

In Syria, Washington has turned to the question of whether to take military action after its latest effort to broker a truce with Russia collapsed last month.

The United States has called for Assad to step down, but for years has seemed resigned to his remaining in control of parts of the country as it prosecutes a separate fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and in Iraq.

The U.S. policy is to target Islamic State first, a decision that has opened it to charges that it is doing nothing to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and particularly in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.

Renewed bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo has killed more than 150 people this week, rescue workers said, as Syria intensifies its Russian-backed offensive to take the whole city.

Anthony Cordesman of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank suggested the United States' failure to act earlier in Syria, and in Aleppo in particular, had narrowed Obama's options.

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