This was before the largely catastrophic and pointless Russian adventure into Ukraine. They turned arguably the most pro-Russian European country (closely related to Russia in terms of everything - culture, religion, language, mentality, history) after Belarus, into a hotbed of anti-Russian sentiments. This is the problem with megalomaniacal autocratic dictators like Putin.
And those 1000's of Russian soldiers and Wagner died for what exactly? To kill Syrian children and civilians just to prop up the Al-Assad regime for a few more years?
Humans are truly idiots by large.