I could be much be wrong but from my layman perspective, this looks like a Putin masterstroke once again, and very likely a sequence of events resulting from a Russian-compromised Donald Trump.
The news reports are unclear but it appears that Putin is handing over Kurdish cities Afrin and Manbij to Turkey and without a peep in protest from Trump. This will corner Kurdish forces in these cities and prevent their retreat.
Previously, Putin was going to allow Assad’s conglomeration of Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese Hezbollah troops to take over the cities (and ostensibly let the Kurdish forces retreat). Syria and the Kurds have both been fighting against ISIS, not each other, and Syria probably would have allowed the Kurds to retreat.
The masterstroke? Putin reneged. He calculated that Syria can take back those cities later and decided forcing the US to choose between our NATO “ally” Islamist-run Turkey and our Kurdish allies (well at least for now), who massively helped US military destroy ISIS, would be a better course of action.
This all after US forces apparently killed dozens if not hundreds of Russian special forces in the past couple weeks near Al Tabiyeh, Syria. Putin must have had this plan going all along. Since it was a defensive attack on the Russian special forces, my guess is that Trump didn’t authorize any of this and Putin decided not to protest the deaths because he knew he had the US in a checkmate on these Kurdish cities.
*Trump’s treason is putting the US military in direct conflict with Russia.* Perhaps Trump knows there will be massive US entanglement in Syria or North Korea and those wars will be his ace in the hole with Mueller. We MUST NOT allow that to happen.
Anyhow, Putin is going to let Turkey have these border cities after all and force the US military to abandon the Kurds.
Erdogan also said that Turkish forces and their Syrian allies would begin besieging the town of Afrin in the coming days, as Ankara pursues a month-long push to sweep a Kurdish militia from its southern border.
A senior Kurdish official said at the weekend a deal had been struck for the Syrian army to enter Afrin and fight back against the Turks. On Monday morning, Syrian state media had said the pro-government militia would enter Afrin "within hours" - although the forces never materialized.
"The (Syrian deployment) was seriously stopped yesterday... It was stopped," Erdogan told reporters following a speech in parliament.
When asked if the deployment was stopped after talks with Putin, Erdogan said: "Yes, it was stopped after those talks".
Another instance of Trump’s treason undermining America’s credibility. Another instance of the US military betraying an ally who died to help us fight Islamist militants.