Based on what they have already done, it not silly at all.
Since they went into Syria, the Germans and the US pulled ground to air missiles out of Turkey, and our lone aircraft carrier was pulled out of the ME.
Seems to me the Russians do control the skies over Syria but don't enforce it as they encourage the west to engage terrorist on the ground.
We should be on the side of Russia in this fight, not Turkey.
Bingo!
Obama can't get anything right.
If the United States wanted to we could clear Russian aircraft out of Syria in a weekend.
I really think a lot of you Putinista's have no actual clue about the relative strength of the Russian armed forces compared to their neighbors, regional powers or the United States.
Russia is not that strong. Only about a quarter of their military can be regarded as first world. They can not project power nearly in the same way we do. They are mostly using dumb bombs and old technology in Syria. Time and time again when their military hardware comes up against what we produce, their stuff loses in embarrassing fashion (obviously much of that is lack of training time, etc).
Putin is doing a pretty good job with a pair of 3's making it look like Russia is strong and mighty again, but most of it is an illusion. If we didn't have an incompetent idiot President in Obama, I don't think Putin would have even gotten away with swiping the Crimea let alone sustaining a civil war in Eastern Ukraine and getting his toes in the water in the Middle East.