Russian leader Vladimir Putin says America knew the flight path of the Russian jet downed by its ally Turkey. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Turkey had “crossed the line of what is acceptable” and warned the incident could severely undermine both its national and regional interests.
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Putin was speaking after meeting his French counterpart and pledging closer co-operation against Islamic State.
Hollande’s global push for support comes in the wake of the coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 dead and hundreds of others injured.
The Russian Defense Ministry later announced that its Russian SU-24 bomber jet had been shot down.
Mevlut Cavusoglu says Russian-Turkish relations have gone through many difficulties in the past, but that he hopes that they will improve and that “diplomacy will win”.
The two leaders, however, sharply differed over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russian Federation and Iran but faces calls for his resignation from the United States, the European Union, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which blame him for the country’s five-year civil war.
However, he told France 24 television: “If we had known it was a Russian plane, maybe we would have warned it differently”. “It’s got insignia, and you can see that very clearly”.
“If it was an American aircraft, would they have struck?”
Putin on Friday discussed the downing with his security council, particularly the “increased tensions over Syria against the background of Turkey’s aggressive and unpredictable actions”, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet has promised to send reconnaissance aircrafts, tanker planes and a warship to help in the fight against ISIS. His government drafted up new economic sanctions against Turkey on Thursday, in retaliation for the attack.
Medvedev said joint investment projects with Turkey will be canceled and negotiations over a preferential trade agreement with Turkey will be scrapped.
Lavrov said Friday Turkey has been reluctant to share information with Moscow about it citizens accused of involvement in terrorist activities.
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“Russia is obliged to prove its allegations, otherwis it will be considered a liar because of those grave and unfair accusations targeting Turkey”.
