Russia is a nuclear power that never wants to use MAD, so Russia backed down and said it would not challenge Turkey over Idlib. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli Air Force shot missiles at Syria from behind a Russian plane, the Syrians tried to shoot down the incoming missiles, and shot down the Russia plane. Israel was supposed to give Russia warning, but wanted to make sure the Iranians didn't have time to get out of the way of their missiles, and knew there was a good chance the Russian plane would get shot down, thereby causing the Russians to order the Syrians not to shoot at Israeli missiles. Didn't quite work.
Israel has been bombing Syria with complete impunity for many years, hundreds of bombing raids every year, and only one Israeli jet shot down (and the pilot bailed out unharmed). Syria only had Soviet air defences, by agreement between Russia and Israel. Russia thinks Israel violated the agreement, and delivered some of Russia's 2nd best SAMs. The US responded by upgrading the Israeli air force with planes that are sold to US customers as being able to evade the best Russian SAMs.
So it's competitive marketing. If Syria can shoot down the Israeli planes, Russian SAMs will sell like hotcakes, and US planes won't sell so well. If Syria cannot shoot down the Israeli planes, Russia will find it much harder to sell its SAMs, and countries will buy lots of US planes.
The Russian SAMs will be operational October 20. It's not clear how soon after that we'll see whether US or Russian weapons are better.
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Trump is quite publicly threatening India over India buying the S400.
That's going to go over so well with Modi in an election year.
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