I know this is a lot, but I've spent a lot of time gathering up this data and this is incredibly important so please try to at least skim it all.
"On Monday, February 8, Russia’s defense minister, Army-General Sergei Shoigu, announced that the military forces of the Southern and Central Military districts, the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS) the airborne troops (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska—VDV), the military transport air force (Voenno Transportnaya Aviatsiya—VTA), the Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla were being mobilized for full battle readiness. The VKS will, according to Shoigu, 'prepare to perform massive air raids and to repel massive air attacks'"
This was done under the guise of a "military exercise" as a way to disguise massive troop movement. It's a favorite tactic of Russian military planners who employed this strategy in the invasion of Georgia (2008) and, more recently, Crimea(2014).
This "exercise" was announced as such after the troops were already en route to their positions further strengthening the argument that this is not what they say it is. While these exercises could be said to be in support of a possible increase in the tempo of Ukraine operations, the fact that the Russian Navy in the Caspian sea is involved makes this unlikely as Caspian ships would be out of range of Ukraine.
This is happening at a time when Kurdish forces fighting for the Syrian regime have the town of "Aleppo, Syria" under siege. Just for some context this city is about 30 miles from the border of Turkey. The region between Aleppo and the Turkish border is flooded with tens of thousands of refugees that are stuck between Russian airstikes and syrian regime forces, and a closed Turkish border. As the situation in Aleppo gets worse these numbers will probably swell even further.
Turkey has already shot down Russian aircraft as they flew over their sovereign airspace several months ago. Russian intelligence invited international experts to examine the black box from the jet that was shot down a month after the event and it was "too damaged" to recover data.
Russian propaganda has also been increasingly painting Turkey as an enemy and a threat to their national security:
Russian media outlets initially blamed the Sinai crash of Metrojet 9268 last autumn on the Islamic State, an atrocity which killed 224 innocents, nearly all of them Russians—a quite plausible claim. However, the Kremlin has abruptly shifted course and now blames the mass murder on Turkish ultranationalist terrorists, without any evidence provided to support that explosive assertion.
Turkey is a NATO country, and while the U.S. and Europe would not be obligated to support an offensive into Syria, they would be obligated to defend Turkey from a Russian/Syrian invasion force.
At the same time Saudi Arabia has committed to the idea of sending ground troops to Syria. They're basically just waiting on word from the U.S. that they'll have their support. In addition the extremely high civilian casualty rate in such a short period of time would pressure the west to get involved. Civilian cities are often put under siege by the country's own military forces for months at a time with civilians being trapped inside their own cities unable to receive aid or supplies.
If this sounds like a ludicrous concept I would invite you to quickly look up exactly what cause the first World War.
Sources:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/turkey-open-border-syrian-refugees-160207113555928.html
https://observer.com/2016/02/mounting-evidence-putin-will-ignite-wwiii/
If you'd like more information about the horrific conditions in a beseiged Syrian city here is an article:
There is also a great NPR podcast about an aid group that smuggled food, medicine, and clothing into some of these cities risking their own lives
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