For the past two months, many of America’s allies have worried that U.S. President Donald Trump really means it when he says that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Venezuela. It turns out that they should have been paying more attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Saturday two Russian cargo planes of personnel and equipment landed in Caracas, prompting a war of words between Moscow and Washington. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the U.S. would not “stand idly by” as Russia continued to arm the illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded that his government opposed the U.S.-led coup in Venezuela.

Some of this is reminiscent of Syria. In the summer of 2015, after Lavrov helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, Russia cut another deal — with Damascus, to establish air bases in Syria and work closely with Iranian forces and militias to take back territory from anti-government rebels. The U.S. complained but did nothing to stop Putin from controlling the airspace in that country. To this day, Russia is the power broker in Syria and their client, President Bashar al-Assad, remains in power.

But the analogy with Syria only goes so far. The Russian flights to Caracas are less than meets the eye, says one U.S. official working closely on the crisis; according to U.S. estimates, there has been no net increase of Russian personnel in Venezuela since the crisis began in January. This source said the Russian forces were sent to protect non-military Russian personnel and to perform maintenance on Venezuela’s Russian-designed air defense system, which was damaged this month when the country’s electric grid went dark.