It's disturbing that propaganda from the Syrian gov and the misinformation that has taken hold in this country. Their are several key reasons why the Russian's need to move these ships into the area. One is that the affiliate group being referred to as al Qaeda is full of Chechyans. Those are the folks who took over the school full of kids and blew them up, killing hundreds. They also took over a theater in Moscow and provided more dead Russian's. More recently they blew up a commuter train traveling between Moscow and St. Petersburg. They hate Russian's and Russia is the foriegn country in Syria. If Assad falls the Checyans will be headed straight to the Russian port to kill some Russian's and get their hands on some hostages.. They will also be searching the neighborhoods looking for them. At this point Russia only cares about surviving a regime change and being able to keep their port. But they are faced with this nasty problem of having 38.000 (the number is going down as they fly them out) Russian civilians stuck in Syria. But hey, here in the USA it's all Obama siding with al Qaeda and the Russian boogie man.