This bit from the Russia/Redline article is interesting, also...

[KoKo]

“No one sees Obama as a weak president, and no one saw that moment as a moment of weakness,” said Igor Korotchenko, the editor of Russia’s National Defense Magazine and a reserve colonel of the Russian General Staff. He is also a member of the Defense Ministry’s civilian oversight council, and often acts as the ministry’s flame-throwing, anti-Western id. Yet he was strangely insistent on defending Obama’s honor. The American president’s decision not to enforce the red line, he said,“was a moment of rare strength.”

Lest you think Korotchenko was buttering me up, he spent a few minutes lecturing me on how Assad never used chemical weapons. “It was a provocation by the rebels and this is well documented,” he told me. “Make sure you note that in your piece.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/russia-syria-red-line-obama-doctrine-goldberg/473319/