On the evening of Thursday 29 May 2021, the the Speaker of the People's Council of Syria, Hammouda Sabbagh, announced that Bashar al-Assad had won 95.1% of the votes in the presidential elections, which were conducted by the regime in government-controlled areas, under the supervision of Iran and Iraq, and in a number of its embassies abroad. This is the second presidential election in Syria since the beginning of the war in 2011, according to which al-Assad will rule the country for a fourth term of seven years.
And while al-Assad was congratulated by his allies, the Council of the European Union announced, on 29 May 2021, the extension of the sanctions imposed by the European Union on the al-Assad's regime for an additional year, that is, until June 1st, 2022. The Council stressed in its statement that the Syrian regime is still practicing "continued repression of the civilian population in the country", according to the BBC, DW Arabic and CNN.
On the day after the announcement of his victory, Bashar al-Assad delivered a speech that the state media and media outlets close to the regime described as a "victory speech", which al-Assad not only described his opponents as traitors, but rather used terms that insult all Syrians who opposed him, describing them as "bulls", according to RT and Enab Baladi.
The results of the elections and al-Assad’s speech sparked anger on social media as opponents criticized the electoral process and the absence of any international monitoring. Twitter users published statistics, pictures, and videos showing the size of human loss, the numbers of detainees, and the extent of the destruction that ravaged in the country during the past ten years.

On 26 September 2020, Reuters reported that Syrian opposition fighters are on their way to Azerbaijan in coordination with Ankara, confirming that Turkey is sending Syrian opposition fighters to support Azerbaijan in its escalating conflict with Armenia, as part of the ongoing clashes between the two countries over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. This was confirmed to the agency by the Armenian ambassador in Moscow, who said that Turkey had sent “around 4,000 fighters from northern Syria to Azerbaijan to take part in the fighting.” Azerbaijan denied these reports, while Turkey has not yet commented, according to Reuters.

Since the Sochi agreement in 17 September 2018, the countrysides of Idlib and Aleppo, which are part of the demilitarized zone or the de-escalation zone, have been subjected to several military campaigns that have been escalating since October 2018. However, the most violent campaign was launched in December 2019 by the regime, with the support of Russia. The region witnessed bombing, forced displacement and systematic destruction, which resulted in the regime taking control of 101 areas in the governorate of Idlib, and 61 areas in the southern and western countryside of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory.
The last military campaign killed 166 people including 55 children, according to the Response Coordination Group in Syria, while the Syrian Civil Defense groups documented 208 victims including 60 children, during the same period.
The number of displaced people from the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib since mid-January 2020 reached 520 thousand civilians, bringing the total number since the beginning of December 2019 to 950 thousand displaced people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.