There's a new venue, new brokers, and new negotiators, but can Syria talks here in Astana resolve the old intractable problems?
"Everything has changed since Aleppo," says a Western diplomat who's been engaged on Syria for the past several years. "There's a new equation."
The opposition's stinging defeat in Aleppo in December robbed them of their last major urban stronghold to challenge President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
And there was another game changer.
Behind the scenes, in the Turkish capital Ankara, a new Russian-Turkish alliance forged a deal to end the final fight for Syria's second city.