How Russia's "humanitarian" intervention in Syria is related to the West

Russia's intervention in Syria is not primarily targeted on fighting the so-called Islamic State. It rather supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in his battle against other, sometimes moderate, rebel groups. This puts pressure on both the USA and the European Union. Especially the latter is struggling to uphold its liberal values in the face of a growing refugee crisis.

What pro-Russian observers of the Syrian civil war praise as a "humanitarian intervention" to stabilize the government and bring back peace to a war-torn country is actually just another one of Putin's strategic maneuvers to further consolidate Russian foreign policy interests confronting the West.

This map of the New York Times analyzes the current situation in Syria and shows where both Russia and the USA used their respective military forces to carry out airstrikes. The American Air Force aimed their strikes at IS-controlled territory, whereas Russia almost exclusively hit rebel groups in strategic areas where Syria's army afterwards began to carry out ground operations, often with the help of Russian military.
This shows that Russia is not actually interested in fighting the Islamic State and prevent further horrifying crimes against civilians and "infidels". Instead, Putin wants to display Russia's military power to the USA and show that he is capable of effectively engaging in the civil war, as opposed to American airstrikes who have so far only proven to be little effective. Putin also wants to help Assad's regime to get back on its feet to have a long-term ally in the Middle East.
When thinking about recent Russian engagement in Georgia, Ukraine or the Baltic States, this can be put into the context of an increasingly aggressive Russian foreign policy.

Another implication of Russia's engagement in Syria is yet another wave of refugees trying to escape from the civil war and looking for asylum in Europe.
This puts pressure on the European Union as more and more people cross the borders and move to wealthy countries such as France, Germany or England. EU border states such as Greece or Bulgaria have de facto abolished the Dublin II regulations and let refugees move to other European countries to not be responsible for their asylum applications.

In countries like Germany, liberal politicians have so far more or less managed to uphold a "refugees welcome"-policy that tries to reflect on the values of humanity and liberalism. Refugees from countries like Syria are granted shelter at least for a certain period of time. Right-winged opposition to this is growing but has not yet succeeded in overturning these principles.
In the face of the recent crisis of the Greek economy, European politicians know very well that even national economies have their limitations and might eventually collapse. The very large number of refugees may pose a serious problem to the economic power even of a country like Germany. This is why European politicians hesitate to put an end to the inhuman situation at Europe's borders such as the Mediterranean Sea where tens of thousands refugees have died already: The EU could not possibly handle the influx of all refugees without risking a collapse of its economic and social systems. They need to deter people from crossing EU borders in an inhuman way.
In summary, the dilemma of European liberals looks something like this: To be able to maintain a liberal attitude in domestic policies, they do little to prevent refugees from dying at the outer borders of the EU which is cynically not a very liberal thing to do.

To get back to my initial argument, Russia is certainly not unhappy with Europe's current situation. A struggling European Union might allow Putin to even further his aggressive foreign policy and destabilize the West.
Sadly enough, the ones who suffer the most from this are millions of Syrian people either stuck in a horrible civil war or struggling to make their way to Europe.