Under the guise of joining the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State, Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened militarily in Syria in September 2015 by launching what the Russian media dubbed Operation Vozmezdie (Retribution). But his real aim was to bolster the beleaguered Bashar al-Assad regime in the western corridor where most Syrians live. Russian forces have deployed advanced tanks and aircraft to repulse an alliance of Sunni rebels that was advancing on the coastal strongholds of the Alawite-dominated Assad regime. But in so doing, Moscow incurred the wrath of Sunni jihadist groups, including the Islamic State, even though the vast majority of Russia's bombings have not targeted the group. As a result, Russia has increasingly been made a primary target of global jihad with a rising number of Islamist terrorist plots and attacks focusing on Russian targets at home and overseas. With thousands of foreign fighters from the former Soviet bloc in Syria and Iraq, there is significant risk this terrorist blowback will get much worse.