Just like in Afghanistan, Russia is willing to come in and fill the void once the US has left in Iraq. Putin isn’t a fool, he’s banking on the US to bail out so Russia can have the foothold and control the governments. I wish this wasn’t going to happen, but left leaning administrations give up just about everything to the Russians each time
Oh I don’t know. The Russians have had a much harder time with islamic terrorism than we have had and there are a lot of chechens in Iraq. Maybe they just want to do some payback.
Why this should be a surprise to anyone is beyond me.
My take on this is that Russia is all for doing anything it can to weaken Assad’s attackers in Syria.