BEIRUT — A Russian initiative to host peace talks this month between the Syrian government and its opponents appears to be unraveling as prominent Syrian opposition figures shun the prospective negotiations amid deep distrust of Moscow and concerns the talks hold no chance of success.
The faltering effort suggests that even after four years and 220,000 people killed, the antagonists in Syria’s civil war are far from burning themselves out. They will likely keep fighting for a more decisive battlefield advantage before real talks can take place.
The planned meetings in Moscow, scheduled to start Jan. 26, would be the first on Syria since a U.N.-sponsored conference in Geneva collapsed early last year after making no headway.
But the Syrian tableau has changed since then.
President Bashar Assad faces growing resentment among his supporters in the wake of bloody defeats, while his main patrons, Russia and Iran, are feeling the pinch from the global plunge in oil prices. Syria’s mainstream opposition — political and armed — teeters on the brink of irrelevance, and the extremist Islamic State group has seized control of a large chunk of northeastern Syria and neighboring Iraq.
The United States also has joined the fray, carrying out airstrikes with its allies against Islamic State group militants while leaving Assad’s forces untouched.
On Saturday evening, the leader of a Damascus-based political bloc of about a dozen left-wing groups said they will go to Moscow to attend the talks.
So far, the Moscow conference has a short list of attendees. Assad’s government has said it is prepared to participate. A few small, government-tolerated opposition groups also will attend. The list of those who have declined contains the bulk of the anti-Assad factions.
