[REDACTED COMMENTS: PLACEHOLDER]
Putin and Erdogan Announce Plan for Northeast Syria, Bolstering Russian Influence
Russia’s leader hosted his Turkish counterpart as a U.S.-brokered cease-fire with Kurdish forces came to an end, underscoring Moscow’s emergence as a powerful player in the Middle East.
Reverend
Yuck.
geoduck no quahog
Next question: How can Putin shield Trump from taking a hit on this? I suspect he cannot be content with the prospect of his asset losing face (and office) over facilitating a sort of alliance between Russia and a NATO ally.
barbed wire Bob
You’re assuming Putin gives a shit about Trump. In Russia’s eyes Trump was merely a tool that happily fell into their hands* but I’m sure they are reading the polls and are concluding he will be, at best, another first term president. At this point he’s an asset that is quickly becoming no longer useful. They will probably try to spit in the soup again by posting a bunch of crap of Facebook and Twitter supporting him and weakening the Dems but, other than that, not much. It would be interesting to see if they throw Trump under the bus to help the Dems impeach the man because impeachment hearings in an election year (with all the polarization that goes along with it) would really paralyze the government and fuck up things in general.
*The original goal was to weaken President Hillary by spitting in the political soup but don’t believe they ever seriously thought Trump would be elected.
dhappy42
Not saying you’re doing this, but it’d be a mistake to think that Russian election ratfucking is limited to helping Trump or messing with Clinton and the next Dem nominee. Social media gets all the attention because we see it every day, but the real game is played with campaign contributions and favors. Russia has infiltrated the NRA and channeled millions in contributions through people like Alex Torshin to most Republicans. Oleg Derepaskaya is investing $200 million in #MoscowMitch’s Kentucky for a reason. We’ve basically made it easy and quasi-legal for foreigners to spend huge sums of money to buy US politicians. And then there’s kompromat. Who knows what the Russians have on whom.
barbed wire Bob
Thank you for adding this
BroodsSexton
So basically we’ve given up our influence so that the Russians can expand theirs, with the effect that our allies in the region who are most closely tied to democratic efforts are going to be displaced and cleansed.
Seems like a strong geopolitical move, Trump.
Reverend
Trump at a poker table would obsess over who won the most hands without bothering to keep track of chip piles, palm an extra card when dealing, then give his cards to Putin thinking hey are worthless, not realizing that when combined with Putin’s they nail the inside straight, but doesn’t stick around to find out how the hand would play out instead sulking our of the room, but not before, in a fit of rage, he hurls his stack of chips at Putin, because that’ll show him.
Seriously: He gave away everything.
In juxtaposition with Trump, you gotta wonder if Putin will end up with the Nobel Prize.
I keep asking myself, how the hell can Putin be negotiating unilaterally but in coordination with Syria AND Turkey… AND the Kurds. I mean, what the he-
And then I remember what Putin used to do to earn a living. At what point do you just tip your cap.
Note: I do limit how much of this would have been intentional versus strategically opportunistic in my thinking, as I don’t think Putin knew Trump was going to do what he’s done. But one way or another he’s pulled a pretty neat trick so long as it doesn’t blow up in his face.
Rojava to Rock 