I’m not an expert, but you’re probably not sending special forces to fight around a heavily mined front that’s been pretty much frozen for a year and a half.
It’s worth finding out if Russia is softer in Syria than it is in Ukraine. Maybe you can’t make progress in eastern Ukraine but can make force them to react to your actions in Syria.
I guess russian military personnel abroad isn’t cannon fodder, because for obvious reasons, they are not as easy to replace as the meat waves in their border. So, maybe russia is being forced to send actual soldiers abroad and leave just the untrained ones in ukraine
The Russian propaganda engine has been working in Africa for a while now. They get the chaos to distract other countries from Ukraine and fresh mercs to send against Ukraine as well. (I am not sure how many Africans they have imported for the war in Ukraine, actually. It could be hundreds or dozens, I dunno.)