When Syria's Kurdish fighters, America's longtime battlefield allies against the
Islamic State, announced over the weekend that they were switching sides and joining up with
Damascus and
Moscow, it seemed like a moment of geopolitical whiplash.
Fearing U.S. abandonment, the
Kurds opened a back channel to the Syrian government and the Russians in 2018, and those talks ramped up significantly in recent weeks,
American, Kurdish and
Russian officials told The Associated Press.
"We warned the Kurds that the Americans will ditch them," Russia's ambassador to the
European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, told Russia's Tass news agency on Monday.