This is a poor and misleading analysis. It fails largely because it's conducted within the outdated confines of Cold War thinking.

First of all, Assad hasn't been conducting "six years of oppression"; he and all Shia, Christians, Druze and every Sunni who has ever worked for the government are fighting for their lives against al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists who have vowed to kill every last one of them after they topple the government. The jihadists--primarily ISIS offshoot al-Nusra--was weeks away from doing so in 2015, when Russia reluctantly stepped in. The so-called Arab Spring in Syria in 2011 was almost immediately hijacked by Sunni extremist forces (many of them foreign jihadists) supported by Sunni-dominated Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Russia is mainly supporting Assad in order to prevent ISIS/al-Nusra from acquiring the resources of a state right on Russia's doorstep. The West should be helping Russia stop the jihadists; Assad can be dealt with later, as Russia has proposed.