Not going out of one's way to protect civilians from enemy action in the context of a battle does not constitute proof of anything other the bare fact one didn't do it. We don't know what the tactical situation was.
Assad, thug though he is, is objectively the protector of Christians, or at least Orthodox Christians in Syria. He's a Ba'athist, an adherent of the secular pan-Arab nationalist fascist ideology, and himself a member of a religious minority that the Sunni majority in Syria might kill with even more enthusiasm than they'd kill Christians, the Alawites, nominally a sect of Shia Islam, though with lots of oddities about their practice that suggest their forebearers may have been crypto-Christians. Christians worship freely in government controlled areas, and are not subject to religious persecution, except by opponents of the regime. It shouldn't be that surprising, seeing that one of Assad's main backers is Russia.