Russian special forces are still on the ground in Syria (especially in Idlib) where they provide training and support attacks on the rebels as of September 2019.

The government has regained control of Syria’s biggest cities, but large parts of the country are still held by rebels, jihadists and the Kurdish-led SDF. In March 2020, Russia and Turkey brokered a ceasefire to halt a push by the government to retake Idlib.

On 14 April 2018, beginning at 04:00 Syrian time (UTC+3), the United States, France, and the United Kingdom carried out a series of military strikes involving aircraft and ship-based missiles against multiple government sites in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.

Russia has supported the incumbent Bashar al-Assad government of Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011: politically, with military aid, and since September 2015, dubbed as Mission in Syria (Russian: Миссия в Сирии Missiya v Sirii) through direct military involvement.

Russia enjoys a historically strong, stable, and friendly relationship with Syria, as it did until the Arab Spring with most of the Arab countries. Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base for its Black Sea Fleet is located in the Syrian port of Tartus.

Now in its 10th year, the Syrian conflict has led to more than 500,000 deaths and displaced an estimated 13 million—over half of Syria’s pre-war population. Over 6.2 million Syrians are internally displaced, and 5.6 million are refugees, predominantly in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.

On 27 February 2020, during the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib an airstrike against a Turkish Army convoy in Balyun, Idlib resulted in the deaths of at least 34 Turkish soldiers according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, while other sources close to Turkey gave tolls of 50–70 dead Turkish soldiers, making it …

On February 25, 2021, the United States military carried out an airstrike on a site believed to be occupied by Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria.

Maximum extent of ISIL’s territorial control in Syria and Iraq on 21 May 2015. The core of the territory of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was in Iraq (until 2017) and Syria (until 2019) where the proto-state controlled significant swathes of urban, rural, and desert territory.

Oil revenues A US Treasury official estimated in 2014 that ISIL earned US$1 million a day from the export of oil, much of which was sold illegally in Turkey. The same year, Dubai-based energy analysts put the combined oil revenue from ISIL’s Iraqi-Syrian production as high as US$3 million per day.

Translation of the name’s components The parallel use of both ISIS and ISIL as acronym originated from uncertainty in how to translate the Arabic word “ash-Shām” (or “al-Sham”) in the group’s April 2013 name, which can be translated variously as “the Levant”, “Greater Syria”, “Syria” or even “Damascus”.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria