Russia will grow wealthier, more powerful, more aggressive in their overall expansionist agenda (Eastern Europe, eventually elsewhere), and much more of a threat to the US and its allies throughout the region and the world.
Sure it’s great IF they actually do get rid of ISIS (we shall see). But having a country like Russia step in and gain such huge strategic advantage over the US and it's allies is nothing we should be cheering about.
If Obama was serious about wanting to take out ISIS, which I don’t believe he ever was—I think him and Putin are actually in cahoots on this whole thing despite his and Kerry’s moans and groans about it, it might not ever have come to this, although Russia would likely have come up with some other rationale or excuse for moving into Syria and taking control of it, and ultimately the entire Middle East. Makes me wonder if ISIS wasn’t a KGB-like invention of the Russians.
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Looks like that may not be so far fetched.
Just came across this last night...
From Aug 23, 2015:
"a recent investigation conducted by Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent newspapers left in Russia, complicates this cozy tale of counterterrorist cooperation. Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions.
In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad."
I don't see that Russia has gained a major new ally in the region...unless it's Iran.
They have always had alignment and alliance with Syria.
What's really different here is the fact the USA, under Obama, has been totally out maneuvered, on a grand scale.
It may result in a permanent realignment of alliances in the Middle East.
Israel declines to criticize the Russian presence and airstrikes.
Egypt supports.
Merkel and EU members of the coalition stating Assad must be at the negotiating table.
And the US/Qutar/Saudis isolated.
It's the "political defeat" that has strategic implications, not modest Russian forces in Syria. And they are modest, at best.