Putin didn’t address efforts to start a peace process in Syria in his speech, focusing on the need to pool global efforts in the fight against terrorism following the attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt. The IS has claimed responsibility for both.
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After the shooting of the Russian plane, which caused the death of one pilot, the Turkish President told journalists today that problems such as the one between Turkey and Russia “should be solved diplomatically”.
“It is precisely with this money that the bandits recruit mercenaries, buy arms and organise inhuman terrorist acts aimed against our citizens, the citizens of France, Lebanon, Mali and other countries”. “We are not planning to engage in military saber-rattling (with Turkey)”, said the Russian President and added: “But if anyone thinks that having committed this very bad war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken”.
Russian Federation has already banned some Turkish food imports, including selected fruit and vegetables, as part of a wider retaliatory sanctions package. “Apparently Allah made a decision to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their sanity”, he said.
“We shall remind them many times about what they’ve done, and they will regret what they’ve done for a long time”, he said.
Minutes after Putin had finished speaking, his energy minister, Alexander Novak, said Russian Federation was halting talks with Ankara on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, a symbolic move created to emphasize the strength of Kremlin anger.
The latest furious exchange comes as the two countries’ top diplomats gear up for their first face-to-face meeting since the plane incident.
It was also reported by RIA news agency that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would meet his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting in Belgrade.
On Wednesday Russia made it personal, saying Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s family was directly profiting from ISIL oil smuggling.
“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq”, he said, citing photos showing columns of tanker trucks purportedly loading oil at Daesh-controlled installations in the two violence-scarred Middle Eastern states before entering neighboring Turkey.
Top Defense Ministry officials also accused Erdogan and his family of personally benefiting from the oil trade with the IS, although they didn’t provide any evidence to back the claim.
His angry warnings came shortly after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey was doing everything it could to control its border with Syria, including setting up “physical barriers” along the 61 mile stretch of land adjoining Islamic State (IS)-held territory. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on parachute and also killed a Russian marine who was involved in rescuing the plane’s co-pilot.
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The authenticity of the video was not immediately clear, but Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed Thursday that the victim was Chechen and called for revenge. “We will reveal it to the world”, the Turkish leader said in a televised speech in Ankara.
