Things are not based on history anymore. It atleast as much as we might think. Russia just took a trip to Afghanistan to try build relations and encoporate a way to utilize Afghanistan. Historically this would make no sense since they have a bad history between each other out of all the countries in the region Afghanistan was the own Russia couldn't possess or influence in the past. That being said Russian lost many battles against Afghanistan against the very same government today "taliban".

>Syria has been an ally of the Soviet Union and Russia for decades through the Assad family

I realize that and I realize that this outcome is bad for Moscow, but the Nazis (and others, e.g., the Turks) went through Ukraine to invade Russia whereas no one has ever gone through Syria to get at Russia, so I would expect Moscow to care less about whether the government of Syria is aligned with Moscow than whether the government of Ukraine is aligned with Moscow.