"We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we're coming out. We're gonna have a 100 percent of the caliphate as they call it, sometimes referred to as land, we're taking it all back quickly, quickly,” he said in a televised speech from Richfield, Ohio that focused on infrastructure development.
He complained that the United States has spent seven trillion dollars in the Middle East “and you know what we have for it? Nothing.”
The State Department’s spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Thursday that they are not aware of any planned pull out of Syria, but always welcome help from other countries.
US military officials had earlier stated that the war against ISIS in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province had stalled after Kurdish forces departed the battlefield to redeploy to Afrin in order to defend that region from Turkey’s military aggression.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday accused the US of “exploiting” their relationship with Kurds in northern Syria.
Russia has come under fire by Kurdish leaders who accuse Moscow of giving Turkey the green light for its Operation Olive Branch on Afrin.
The PYD, the ruling party in Rojava, on Thursday evening published a video it said was of people in Afrin forcing a Russian delegation out.
Today
— pyd rojava (@PYD_Rojava) March 29, 2018
The people of #Afrin expelled the delegation of #Russia in response to their agreement to the occupation of #Erdogan to Afrin pic.twitter.com/LUGELmSFwe
People are heard chanting “betrayer!” A woman behind the camera said Russia had sold them out and then tried to deliver aid. “Open the road!” another man in the crowd could be heard shouting.
After taking Afrin last week, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to take their military operation, which Ankara frames as a counter-terror operation against alleged terror groups in northern Syria, to Manbij and across Rojava.
The United States has forces in Manbij alongside its allied Kurdish-led SDF and American officials have said they have no intention of withdrawing, despite Turkey’s threats.
The US and Turkey last month announced a strategic partnership and the intention to work together in Syria. Talks are ongoing between them, with the situation in Manbij taking top priority.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron met with Rojava officials in Paris on Thursday and reportedly said he was prepared to rapidly deploy French troops to support Kurds and the US in blocking advances by Turkish forces and their allied Syrian militias.
France, reeling from a recent terror attack on its soil, is worried about jihadist influences among Turkey’s Syrian allies.
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