I remember reading a theory on the_donald back in the day that made a lot of sense.

The story goes all the way back to 2011 when OPEC raised gas prices and prices were above $4/gal in some states. Russia wanted to fuck with OPEC and opened up a ton of oil reserves and lowered the price of oil. I'm not sure who wanted it whether it was OPEC or China, but the plan became to bypass Russia and run a pipeline through Syria. The ruler of Syria didn't want a pipeline. Hillary Clinton as SoS did what the US always does and tried to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad and install someone that would allow this pipeline. So Hillary created ISIS by arming terrorists to overthrow Assad. It was working, until Russia saw what was going on and started supporting Assad. It was around this time, the Obama administration started badmouthing Putin publicly because we couldn't admit we were "fighting" against Russia because it was all black ops. This is one of the main reasons that Russia supported Trump over Hillary in 2016. They did not want to see their economy destroyed by Hillary. Now the same regime is back in power. They will do everything they can to use their media apparatus to turn public opinion against Syria and install someone friendly to them.