Thread by @Monaheart1229

Here's the upshot of the agreement that Putin & Erdogan reached during their meeting in Sochi today.
Putin-1, USA/Democracy/World Peace-0.
Thanks, Trump. #TuesdayThoughts
nytimes.com/2019/10/22/wor…

2-"The negotiations ended in a victory for Mr. Putin: Russian and Turkish troops will take joint control over a vast swath of formerly Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria, in a move that cements the rapid expansion of Russian influence in Syria at the expense of the

3-"United States and its Kurdish former allies.
Under terms of the agreement, Syrian Kurdish forces have six days to retreat more than 20 miles from the border, abandoning land that they had controlled uncontested until earlier this month — when their protectors, the American

4-"military, suddenly began to withdraw from the region. The Syrian Kurdish leadership did not immediately respond to the demand. Mr. Erdogan got most of what he wanted — a buffer zone free of a militia that Turkey regards as a terrorist threat — but it came at the expense of

5-"sharing control of the area with Mr. Putin and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, whose rule Mr. Erdogan has long opposed. Mr. Putin has emerged as the dominant force in Syria and a major power broker in the broader Middle East — a status showcased by Mr. Erdogan’s hastily

6-"arranged trip to the Russian president’s summer home in Sochi. And it looks increasingly clear that Russia, which rescued the government of President Assad with airstrikes over the last four years, will be the arbiter of the power balance there. As President Trump questions

7-"American alliances and troop deployments around the world, Russia, like China, has been flexing its muscles, eager to fill the power vacuum left by a more isolationist United States. In Syria,

8-"both Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan have seized opportunities created in Mr. Trump’s sudden withdrawal this month of American forces in the country..." ~NYT *What Putin & Erdogan have gained by virtue of Trump's cooperation, we'll likely never get back. #TuesdayThoughts

9-"The Sochi meeting looked to be a culmination of Mr. Putin’s yearslong strategy of taking advantage of Western divisions to build closer ties with Turkey — a NATO member and long a key United States ally — and to increase Moscow’s influence in the Middle East."