The second siege of Aleppo has ended, almost two weeks after it started and probably just in time to avert a major humanitarian disaster. For 12 days, the 2 million or so hapless residents of the government-controlled enclave of the city — many of whom were already internally displaced from other areas — were completely cut off. Nothing got in or out — no food, fuel, medicine or people.

Although this was not the first time Aleppo has endured such a siege, this time around it was far more dramatic. The only road linking west Aleppo to the rest of state-controlled Syria — and indeed the rest of the world — is a narrow and winding route called the Khanaser road.

In what is an ominous harbinger of what may be yet to come as a consequence of Russian military intervention, former sworn jihadi enemies cooperated in severing the route. While the Islamic State (IS) attacked with suicide car bombs and captured large stretches of the “soft target” road near Athria town, Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamist factions launched an attack at its entrance into Aleppo city at Ramouseh. The Syrian army and its allied paramilitary forces had been on the offensive to the south of the province, making convincing gains both in IS-held and rebel-held territory backed by heavy, daily Russian airstrikes. It was this shared existential threat that convinced the jihadi groups to put aside their deadly differences, at least for now, and could signal a new and worrying trend.

As it stands now, the Russian intervention in Aleppo has been instrumental in reinvigorating government troops and enabling them to capture strategic territory on long stalemated fronts. To the southeast, the push is toward the besieged Kweires military airport in IS territory. Reaching that would be a huge morale boost for loyalist forces and their supporters, after the traumatic fall of the besieged Tabaqa airport in Raqqa to IS last year and the slaughter of most of its captured defenders. To the southwest, the push has been into rebel-controlled territory with the objective of reaching the Damascus highway. Indeed, capturing and reopening that vital artery is one of the long-term strategic objectives of the Syrian government, which has launched an offensive in Hama toward Idlib aimed at securing it farther to the south.