The United States is trying to persuade the Kurds not to engage in dialogue with the Syrian government, encourage separatist sentiment among them, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday.
"At the same time, the United States has long been dissuading the Kurds, with whom they are cooperating, from dialogue with Damascus. Washington has actively encouraged and continues to encourage separatist sentiment among the Kurds, completely ignoring the sensitive nature and regional dimensions of the Kurdish problem," Lavrov told a press conference.
"Seeking to find the motivations behind Washington’s policy, we cannot but suppose that it is either misunderstanding of the whole situation or deliberate provocation," the minister added.
On January 13, the Defense Post news website published an article, in which the spokesman of the US-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, outlawed in Russia and the United States, said that the coalition was engaged in a training of a 30,000-strong force on the territory within Syria currently controlled by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to maintain security in the area along the Syrian border.
On January 16, the coalition reaffirmed its resolve to train, equip and support its SDF partners to attain the lasting defeat of the IS terrorist group.
A day later, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied that Washington had any plans to establish a border security force in Syria, noting that the situation had been "misportrayed," but stressed that the United States would maintain a military presence in the country focused on ensuring that the IS threat could not re-emerge.
