Since May 2015, the West and its Middle Eastern partners have repeatedly failed to read Russian intentions on Syria. First, when they assumed that, after playing a positive role in the settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue in July 2015, Moscow would immediately help the US and EU to settle the Syrian conflict. In early August 2015, Turkish President Recep Erdogan believed that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had already made a decision to shift support away from the Damascus regime. During summer 2015, intensive meetings between Russian, American and Saudi officials only strengthened the confidence of those analysts and policy makers who expected changes in the Kremlin's stance on Syria. They argued that Russian withdrawal of support for Assad was a matter of time and Moscow was only trying to bargain a better deal.

At the same time, by September 2015, it was obvious that both Western and regional powers had obviously underestimated the seriousness of the warning signals about the growing Russian military presence in Syria they were receiving from the ground. Thus, Moscow's preparations for a military scenario were first known in mid-August 2015, when various media sources began reporting about the presence of Russian military delegations arriving in Syria to assess the capacity of local airfields to host Russian fighter jets. Subsequent information about the reconstruction of Latakia airport and two other airfields in the area controlled by the Assad regime were additional signs that Moscow was preparing for a military operation. Finally, in the second half of September, when the number of Russian fighter jets and military helicopters in Syria exceeded the number of actual Syrian pilots available to use them, the last doubts about Moscow's intentions should have disappeared. Apart from that, on 28 September 2015, during his speech at the UN General Assembly and meetings in New York, Putin clearly stated that Russia would continue to talk to the international community on Syria but that would not mean that the military support of the Assad regime would be stopped. Nevertheless, the declaration made by the Russian authorities on 30 September 2015 to deploy air forces in Syria caught the international community completely unprepared.