Pretty disgusting this, let's recognise it for what it is.
Putin/Russia feigned at the bombing campaign being against IS, instead, they've gone after the only reasonably moderate rebel opposition to Assad's wanton genocide. The rebel opposition the West are backing in lieu of intervening themselves.
Russia is militarily intervening to support a military dictatorship that has been massacring its people for years because they're a regional ally to Russia.
The Western world really can't win now. They recognised Assad was a war criminal, slaughtering his own people, but held no appetite to intervene militarily however, from the public or the powers that be. So there became a policy of, "let's give the regime's opposition non leathal aid and turn a blind eye to munitions getting into their hands with a little help from Turkey"..
Oh, stalemate. The conflict deteriorates into poisonous sectarianism, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia all aid Assad's regime on the ground with everything from munitions to actual boots on the ground. Vile extremists like IS emerge from the shadows in the gulf of security and the lawlessness of occupied territories. Completely destabilises Iraq and leads to war there also.
Full blown clusterfuck is the result.
Now Russia is attempting to stamp out the only feintly legitimate opposition to Assad using the Western lead bombing campaign against IS to legitimise it.
This just leaves IS and Assad. Two polar extremes that need each other. Each justifies each other's existence.
Assad keeps his strangle hold of power, and emerges with the narrative of having defeated the "West's terrorists" in the form of the FSA. IS remain everyone's enemy and they allow Assad some legitimacy, and Russia also in backing Assad.
- Everyone loses. Besides Russia, Assad and IS.
In which case, yeah, everyone loses.
Entirely fucked up this. Who knows what would've happened if Obama didn't show himself to a complete and utter clown once Assad called his bluff re the 'red line' and used chemical weapons on his own people, with no military response forthcoming. The dramatic U-turn with the air strikes against the regime served as more or less a green light to Assad and Russia.
The West is weak and lacks a leadership with bottle. Is scarred by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no appetite to get involved in another conflict, however just or unjust that may be.
I don't think it's any coincidence that Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea shortly after.
Or that Russian spy planes and bombers are now rountinely entering British airspace. Or stirring unrest in other ex Soviet countries.
We even have a situation where Russia sponsored goons, seemingly accidentally, shoot down a civilian passenger jet over Ukraine killing more than 200 people (most of them Western Europeans), with an anti aircraft battery that was photographed returning across the border to Russia, and the whole world mourns for a while, and that's that.
These are very strange times.