Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday vowed never to forget Turkey’s downing of one of Moscow’s warplanes, as he lashed out once again at the leadership in Ankara over the incident.
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The president spoke after Russia imposed sanctions against Turkey for shooting down the Russian jet last month, the worst confrontation with a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since the Cold War.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday. “But if someone thinks that he can commit a foul war crime, the murder of our people, and just get away with some tomatoes or limits in construction and other spheres, then he is deeply mistaken”.
Putin further evoked the term “Allah”, the Islamic and Arabic word for God, saying the Turkish political elite lacked wisdom and judgement.
“It appears that Allah chose to punish the ruling clique of Turkey by depriving them of wisdom and judgment”, he said. “We frankly see no evidence, none, to support such an accusation”, he said.
“We shall remind them many a time what they have done and they will more than once feel regret what they have done”.
Relations between Russia and Turkey have nosedived since Turkey shot down the Russian bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border on November 24.
The officials did not specify what direct evidence they had of the involvement of Erdogan and his family, an allegation that the Turkish president has vehemently denied. “I do not understand why they did it. Any problem – even that which we might have missed – could have been dealt with in a different way”, Putin added.
Russian Federation has accused Turkey of aiding terrorists in Syria and of buying oil from Islamic State, thereby helping to finance the extremist group.
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 emphasise the strength of Kremlin anger. “No criminal business with terrorists”, said Putin noting that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is “a destructive and barbarous ideology”.
Putin said in his speech that Russia’s air campaign in Syria, which started on September 30, is meant to fend off a terror threat to Russian Federation posed by militant groups in Syria that include people from Russian Federation.
“We know who in Turkey is filling their pockets and allowing terrorists to profit from oil stolen from Syria”. “We will not be evading this contact”, Lavrov said during a visit to Cyprus.
“If you look at the map, it looks like ISIS is smuggling oil through Kurdish-controlled territories in both Iraq and Syria to Turkey”, Kurdish expert Wladimir van Wilgenburg, of the Jamestown Foundation, told Business Insider on Wednesday.
“It is for Russian Federation and Turkey to come to terms”.
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Russian Federation is carrying out a controversial military operation in Syria, which is officially directed against ISIL, but it has been accused of supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and targeting mostly moderate opposition groups in the country instead.
