Meanwhile, Russia has been working to drive a wedge between the U.S. government and the Syrian Kurds. While the U.S. has seen no evidence of direct Russian military support for the Kurdish forces, the YPG has been taking advantage of Russian airstrikes to take territory from other rebels in the north. Russia is also trying to take advantage of Kurdish tensions with Turkey by offering support for the YPG and promising to protect the Kurdish fighters from Turkish air strikes.
U.S. officials have tried to persuade the Turkish government that U.S. support for the YPG is preferable to the alternative, which is letting the Kurds drift further into the Russian sphere of influence. “If you don’t like our support for the Kurds, you really won’t like it when the Russians come in,” the senior U.S. diplomat told us.
Normally, Washington would side with Turkey, a NATO ally, against the YPG, which has roots in the Kurdish separatist movement known as the PKK, still designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. But the YPG is the most effective group of fighters today in Syria against the Islamic State.
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