No, Kelly, it's deeper than that.
I'll try and keep this as brief as possible. A couple of years back I was struggling with this same problem, I was an undergrad at the time. One of my academics, top guy working on this stuff, told me that in order to understand the Middle East, you need to stop falling into the trap of viewing it through the lens of post-colonialism.
Essentially, what that means is you need to stop and think about how you see the world. Democracy =good, autocracy = bad is a western construct. Democracy as a system of government was born in the west and has developed in the west over centuries to the point that it's at today. Democracy is an alternative form of government to the Assad model, ie, autocratic. Distance yourself from the word dictator for the moment. Stop assuming that just because democracy is what we have, it must be best in every situation.
The next common trap is to assume that Syria started because of the Arab spring. It didn't. Syria was not part of the wave of Arab countries that rose up because the people demanded democracy, the Sunnis demanded to be ruled by a Sunni leader. Islamic theory is not compatible with democracy. It calls for a strong leader of the faith. That's what Syria was about- to put it very simply, Assad = Islamic sect closest to Shia, majority Muslim population in Syria = Sunni. They wanted a Sunni leader first and foremost, not democracy. Assad recognised the religious tensions, that's why he ran his country secularly. People from my own minority religion in Syria will happily tell you that they wish they could go back to the days of Assad. As long as you didn't speak out against the regime, you were allowed to practice in peace, be it Sunni or Shia Islam, Yazidis, Orthodox Christians etc. People were pretty happy with that- apart from the Sunni rebel groups who rose up. The same ones the British government wanted to back at the very beginning, one of which turned out to be ISIS.
The current western plan for Syria is to remove Assad, destroy ISIS and attempt to set up a democracy. Remember that democracy and Islam in its purest form aren't particularly compatible. I'm not going to go into Islamic theory here. Also remember that democracy as it exists in the west is fluid. It has evolved over hundreds of years. We have seen time and time again in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan that going in all guns blazing, setting up a democracy on a western model and leaving them to it does not work. Sometimes it doesn't even take a year to collapse. Islam, tribes, culture, lack of experience of that kind of culture etc are all contributing factors here. The fact is, it doesn't work.
Putin understands that. Putin has an interest in a stable Middle East for a lot of reasons- the port is just one of those. One rather large one being the sizeable Muslim population in Russia. Forget Chechnya for a moment, that's a whole separate issue and will overcomplicate matters here, lots of other regions of Russia predominantly populated by Muslims. Putin gets that democracy has failed in the Middle East time and time again. Maybe it will work one day, but it's not ready for it right now.
What does work- and what even the rebel groups actually want- is a strong autocratic leader. The problem is not a want for democracy, it's a fight between religious groups as to which religion that leader should belong. Remember again here that Syria was largely peaceful for so long before all this kicked off because the country was run secularly.
I am not saying that reinstating Assad is an ideal solution. I am saying that it's a more realistic option than the west's plan.