Further to the topic Who Really Attacked Russia’s Air Base in Syria?:

...In 1989, Syrian helicopter gunships fired on a Soviet cruiser near the port city of Latakia, killing two sailors. The motive remains unclear to this day. David W. Lesch, an American historian of Syria who struck up a friendship with Bashar Al Assad, speculated in Foreign Policy magazine that Bashar’s father Hafez Al Assad may have approved the attack as a bloody message to Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, who was warming up to the West and urging Assad to make peace with Israel.

Remember, this occurred when the Soviet Union and Syria were close, Cold War friends — or, perhaps, more like frenemies.

With Bashar unwilling to make any serious compromise in today’s Syria, following his series of Russian-backed battlefield victories across the country, this precedent may yet prove relevant — if not now, then in the months or years ahead as the interests between Moscow and Damascus diverge.

“Whatever the reason, that [1989] incident, now largely forgotten, revealed in dramatic fashion the complexity of the relationship between Syria and Russia over the decades,” Lesch wrote.