WAIT, THEY KNEW DONALD WAS UNTRUSTWORTHY?:

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.

But in fact, the move had been in the works for more than a year. 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.

The switch in allegiances is a stark illustration of how American foes like Russia and Syria are working steadily to fill the vacuum left by President Donald Trump's retreat in the region.

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