Turkey says Russia stopped deal for Syrian forces to help Afrin Kurds

Turkey won Russia’s backing to block a deal that would have seen Syrian pro-government forces enter territory held by Kurdish militia fighters to help them resist an advance by Turkish troops, Ankara said on Tuesday.

The move illustrates the increasingly tangled battlefield in northern Syria, where local alliances and rivalries in a multi-sided civil war now entering its eighth year are coming into collision with the diplomatic maneuvers of global powers.

Turkey launched an assault last month to drive the Kurdish YPG militia, which it considers a threat, out of northern Syria’s Afrin region.

The YPG asked Damascus - a political rival in the war - to send soldiers to help repel the Turkish attack, and a Kurdish official said on Sunday that an agreement had been reached for the army to deploy there.

“The (deployment) was seriously stopped yesterday,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters. He said the decision was taken after he asked for Russia to intervene in a phone call with President Vladimir Putin.