Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that he was willing to meet his Turkish counterpart this week for the two countries’ first high-level face-to-face talks since Ankara shot down one of Moscow’s warplanes.
Advertisement
He said the request for a meeting during the 22nd Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Council of Ministers meeting in Belgrade came from Turkey’s Mevlut Cavusoglu during a phone conversation between the two after the incident.
“We’ll meet together with the Turkish minister of foreign affairs, we’ll hear what he must say”, Lavrov said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart in Nicosia.
The meeting could offer a way to de-escalate a growing crisis between Russian Federation and Turkey.
In his statements, Kasoulides said that Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades briefed Lavrov on the ongoing negotiations on the Cyprus problem, “also expressing our appreciation for the unremitting principled position of the Russian Federation”.
Turkey refuses to apologize for downing the fighter jet, what it sees as defending its airspace.
Two Turkish F-16 jets shot down a Russian plane on November 24 which Ankara said violated its airspace.
Russia’s Agriculture Ministry will not expand the list of products banned for importing to Russian Federation from Turkey, a representative of the ministry’s press service said on Thursday. “I am asking Putin: Will you [stay in your post if you fail to prove these claims]?”
1 signed a government order approving a raft of sanctions to be imposed on Turkey over the downing of a Russianwarplane.
“Russia has made certain decisions, especially economic decisions, and we have not responded to them”, Cavusoglu told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.
Turkey imports 95 percent of its energy from overseas and meets 55 percent – or 27 billion cubic meters (bcm) – of its natural gas consumption and 30 percent of its oil needs from Russian Federation.
Advertisement
The United States reacted by defending Turkey as its “great partner” in fighting IS terrorists.
