Putin Tested on Principles and Practicality in Syria MOSCOW - For months now, Western policy makers have been racking their brains to figure out what strategic interests have made Russia so intent on supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad - a leader who, facing a popular uprising, seemed to be on his way out anyway. It is an understandable question, but perhaps the wrong one. Decisions are flowing from President Vladimir V. Putin, whose career has left him overwhelmingly wary both of revolutions and of Western intervention. This is a man who, during the death throes of the Communist system, personally defended the K.G.B."s headquarters in Dresden against an angry crowd of Germans. And Mr. Putin's already suspicious view of street politics only deepened with the "colored revolutions" of the mid-2000s, in which pro-Western protests, some supported by the United States, ousted a series of Moscow-friendly leaders. Since the recent Arab uprisings began, Russian leaders have viewed them through this lens - as a product not of social change but of interference by the West, intended in part to damage Russia. Mr. Putin takes little interest in the nitty-gritty of foreign policy, but this notion touches him personally. He memorably blew up in April 2011, when NATO warplanes were attacking Libya against Russia's protestations, delivering a speech that scoffed at the notion that Western intervention aimed to advance democracy. "Look at the map of this region, there are monarchies all around," he said during a visit to Denmark. What do you think they are - Danish-style democracies? There are monarchies everywhere, and this basically corresponds with the mentality of the people, as well as longstanding practice. "Libya, by the way, has the largest oil and the fourth-largest gas reserves in Africa," he added. This immediately presents the question: isn't this the basis for the interests of those now messing around there? From the first, Russia's Middle East experts, most of them Soviet-trained, have been suspicious of the notion that street politics had the power to change governments. In February 2011, when crowds of more than a million were thronging Tahrir Square, a Russian deputy foreign minister visited Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak. He delivered the soothing message that Egypt's domestic crisis should be settled through dialogue, and affirmed Russia's firm stance against foreign intervention in Egypt's internal affairs. As it turned out, it was Mr. Mubarak's last meeting with a foreign envoy - he stepped down two days later. It is impossible to fully disentangle these reactions from what has been going on inside Russia over the last year, as a decade-long contract between Mr. Putin and his citizens began to fray. Though there is little comparison on the ground between the Arab uprisings and Russia's unrest - the Russian opposition movement remains small, Moscow-centered and moderate in its tactics - the sudden change has left the government wary of legitimizing any popular dissent. State-controlled media paints a bleak picture of Arab countries that have seen uprisings, and Russian diplomats have approached new authorities in the Arab world slowly and awkwardly. Meanwhile, Russian leaders fear that rising Islamism in the Arab world will breathe new life into the armed insurgency in the northern Caucasus, which is mostly Sunni. In short, Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to say no - to Western intervention and to the specter of revolution. The argument has been framed as a matter of principle, making it difficult to dial back. Leonid Medvedko, who covered Syria for Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, said Russia could not publicly call for Mr. Assad to step down, because it would create "a very serious precedent for anyone who doesn't like their government." "I don't want to allow such ultimatums, because they could then be presented to any country," said Mr. Medvedko, who is now a regional analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences. We cannot allow this precedent to be established. Now they don't like Assad. Next they may not like someone in Lebanon. We've already seen how they didn't like someone in Libya - we saw the fate of Qaddafi.