“Putin smelled blood in the water when the airstrikes against the Assad regime were suddenly called off,” Oubai Shahbandar, a senior advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, the U.S.-backed opposition group, said of the Ukraine invasion. “We’ve seen this movie play out before, sadly, as Russian-supplied planes, tanks and even some mercenaries continue to arrive in Syria uninterrupted.”

“Hope won’t stop Russian aggression,” Shahbandar added.

A veteran rebel fighter who goes by the nickname Abu Obaida said he thought the U.S. and the West might be more likely to help in Ukraine’s case — there is already a new government in Kiev in place, for example, and the country is of critical strategic importance. But he said he’d given up on the idea of getting meaningful support in Syria. “We don’t wait for this anymore,” he said. “Our expectations are very low.”

Samer Kanjo, an activist from Aleppo, said Ukrainians should be wary of any promises from abroad. “We got a lot of promises from a lot of countries at the beginning of the revolution,” he said. “I would tell the Ukrainian people not to put their hopes too fully on such promises — because at the end of the day, [countries] could change their minds, and there could be deals done, and the Ukrainian people could be left alone, just like the Syrians.”