Vladimir Putin ‘Laughing Out Loud’ At Donald Trump’s Syria Crisis, Says Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist
As the United States Vice President Mike Pence announced a “cease fire” in the Turkish attack on the Kurdish people in Syria, as the BBC reported, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who has authored two books on Donald Trump, says that the “mess” in Syria benefits one person — Vladimir Putin.
According to Pence’s announcement, which made only one reference to the “Kurdish population” but instead referred to “the YPG,” the Kurds will have 120 hours — or five days — to abandon the so-called “safe zone,” a region in northeastern Syria where the Kurds reside, but which the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has reportedly coveted. Trump suddenly announced the pullback of U.S. troops from the region on October 6, to purportedly make way for the Turkish military action.
The YPG is a military group, composed mainly of ethnic Kurds, that was one of the most important U.S. allies in the war against the Islamic State.
But hundreds of Kurds have already been killed in the fighting, as The Inquisitr reported, and 130,000 have been forced to flee their homes — homes that they will now be forced to abandon permanently.
“Vladimir Putin must be smiling — even laughing out loud — at the bungling Donald Trump’s crazy mess in Syria,” wrote David Cay Johnston, in an essay published by the news site Raw Story.
Johnston listed several way in which Trump’s abrupt decision and the aftermath has been to Putin’s benefit, potentially causing Putin to be “thrilled with Trump’s disaster.”
“Putin tightened his hold on Syria,” giving Russia a second “warm water military port,” after it also gained one by annexing Crimea in 2014, Johnston wrote. “Thanks to Trump the Kremlin is now a player in the Middle East.”
Trump also gave Russia “a major advance in Putin’s long-range goal of destroying NATO,” by setting the United States in opposition to Turkey, which has the second-largest military of any NATO country.
“Putin is the clear winner in Trump’s blood-soaked disaster,” Johnston wrote.
Johnston was far from the first to accuse Trump of essentially acting in Putin’s interest by his abrupt pullback of U.S. troops from the northeast Syrian border. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also told Trump in a face-to-face meeting at the White House on Wednesday that his decision to abandon the Kurds in favor of a Turkish invasion ultimately benefited Putin.
“All roads with you lead to Putin,” Pelosi told Trump in the meeting, as The Inquisitr reported.
Her remark triggered what she later called a “serious meltdown” by Trump in which he raged at her, calling Pelosi a “third rate politician” and saying, “See you at the polls!” as Pelosi walked out of the confrontational meeting.
