Russia supports Syria because Syria is a key geographic area in allowing the U.S. and Qatar to cut into Russia's oil and gas sales to Europe. Turkey is a U.S. ally. Israel and Saudi Arabia are also U.S. allies. Of course they would be fine with getting rid of Assad in Syria.

"The Qatar-Turkey pipeline was a proposal to build a natural gas pipeline from the Iranian–Qatari South Pars/North Dome Gas-Condensate field towards Turkey, where it could connect with the Nabucco pipeline to supply European customers as well as Turkey"

"The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way. Qatar along with the Turks would like to remove Al-Assad and install the Syrian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the best organized political movement in the chaotic society and can block Saudi Arabia's efforts to install a more fanatical Wahhabi based regime. Once the Brotherhood is in power, the Emir's broad connections with Brotherhood groups throughout the region should make it easy for him to find a friendly ear and an open hand in Damascus."

[en.wikipedia.org]

[theguardian.com]

[thenational.ae]

[pipelinesinternational.com]

[thenational.ae]

[ansamed.info]

...and the infotainment is coming from the mainstream media.

@Piece2YourPuzzle
Ok, that doesn't change Russia's motivation to distract from Ukraine [economist.com]
Not sure if you were attempting to counter my point it add to it. Please cite sources with you point.

The Nabucco is still a dream and cost estimates have continued to go up, so that won't happen. [middleeasteye.net]
Your best article is from 2013 (Guardian). Others are also old or the links no longer function (pipelines international). A ton has happened since then. Saudi and others isolating Qatar is one example [en.m.wikipedia.org] Qatar went into the arms.of Iran, so no pipeline from Qatar through Saudi.

Geopolitics moves quickly, so current events matter. It's unclear to me what you were attempting to highlight with your commentary.

@dokala My point was that Russia supports Syria for the former reasons I already stated. The U.S. had been trying to take over Syria since at least 2011, so my articles are from around that time, including the 2013 article. I don't doubt there are other reasons that run into today, but other reasons co-exist. The U.S. has already lost in Syria though. That doesn't mean the U.S. won't still demonize Russia even after Syria because it's the long term plan. It's one of the reasons, besides having no evidence, I don't believe in the whole collusion with Trump crap being peddled by the U.S. establishment. The biggest reason the U.S. is anywhere in the Middle East is because of oil and gas and the economy, still today just as much as 2011 or 2013 or 1953 (Iran).

Do you really think Russia could "distract" the U.S. away from the Ukraine? The U.S. has been paying attention all along. I don't think Syria is/was a distraction at all, but just a different side of the game. Ukraine is a part of the strategy to control Central Asia. This has been outlined as far back as 1997 in "The Grand Chessboard" by Zbigniew Brzezinski.

I think we are more in agreement than we are in disagreement.

As to the Middle East Eye article, I'm not going to go over every single argument in it, but just because Russia and Iran are competing for oil sales doesn't mean they weren't allied against the U.S. in Syria to keep the U.S. out of their markets. The enemy of my enemy is my friend type thing. Also, there has to be "proof" of a deal that Assad didn't sign from Qatar to prove that Qatar and the U.S. wanted a pipeline running to Turkey? Proof how? Do they need a photo of the actual document with Assad hovering over it and thinking about it? Besides, point number 2 says an energy scholar at Oxford says there is no proof of it, but that he doesn't doubt it could have happened. I mean come on. The author of that article is trying to pass off opinion from an Oxford professor as fact. Did you know that Middle East Eye is funded by none other than Qatar? I wouldn't put too much into anything they say about these issues. [en.wikipedia.org]

@Piece2YourPuzzle
One thing, Russian wasn't trying to distract the US from Ukraine. Most of that was for their own population. A constant focus/threat to garner support from their population has proven to be effective across the world throughout history.