In 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared that “the den of terrorists must be destroyed.” He was referring Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the militant group whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. Sharaa has been widely praised as a pragmatist. But his pivot on Russia—a full partner in Bashar al-Assad’s violence against both HTS and the Syrian people—is still remarkable. There is no doubt that Damascus has much to gain from the