Syria's Ceasefire Has Been Blown To Pieces

Syria's ceasefire is an isn't.

It has been blown to pieces by wave upon wave of airstrikes on civilian targets inside Aleppo, and exists in the minds only of foreign diplomats as a fantasy they need to hang onto with desperation.

According to Staffan de Mistura, the Italian count of Swedish extraction with the near hopeless job of UN peace envoy to Syria, a Syrian has been killed every 25 minutes over the last couple of days.

He implored Russia and America to step in to revive peace negotiations he had been chairing over recent days.

In a briefing to the UN Security Council, he said: "I really fear that the erosion of the cessation is unravelling the fragile consensus around a political solution, carefully built over the last year."

He knows the ceasefire's heart has stopped.

Only by pounding on its chest with unreasonable optimism, and some outside help, can it be revived.

But the peace is not in America's gift. That power lies in the Kremlin and directly in the hands of Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president may have given the impression that he had pulled his forces out of Syria, having saved the regime of Bashar al Assad, and brought a level of military parity to the conflict that allowed for a ceasefire.

But it would have been naive to think he had given up the levers that exercise power in Damascus.

He has left a substantial air force, naval task force, artillery and missile batteries behind, and further reserved the "right" to continue to attack "terrorists" fighting against the Assad regime.

Some of these include al Qaeda affiliate the al Nusra Front, but others have been seen as moderate for years and get the backing of the US, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and even the UK.

The focus, lately, of the Russian and Syrian campaign has been to move artillery and tanks into the north-east and north-west of Aleppo in order to finally encircle the last of the rebels still fighting there.

A profligate disregard for civilian casualties has meant that this tactic has enjoyed a scorched earth success - but has also united rival rebel groups in their battle for survival.

They are now poised to withdraw entirely from the near moribund peace process.

This will be welcomed by Russia and Damascus which, one can safely predict, will not offer any lifesaving therapy (ending bombardments) to the negotiating process until they are able to do so entirely on their own terms.

This leaves foreign diplomats yelling "Live! Live!" with more conviction than optimism.