“In recent days a fashion led by Russian Federation has emerged”.
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USA state department spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday that Washington rejected the premise that the Turkish government was in league with the militants to smuggle oil, saying it saw no evidence to support such an accusation.
With the war of words between the two nations escalating since the downing of the Russian jet by Turkey, President Vladimir Putin hit out at the Turkish leadership saying, that “Allah” was punishing their leaders by stripping off their “sanity” and depriving them of “intelligence”.
LONDON/MOSCOW Britain joined U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State in Syria on Thursday, but Vladimir Putin issued bitter new denunciations of Turkey for shooting down a Russian plane, demonstrating the limits to worldwide solidarity.
Russian Federation has announced wide-ranging sanctions against Turkey – a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member – because of the 24 November border clash, including an import ban on Turkish fruit, vegetables and some other foods.
“For that money the bandits are recruiting mercenaries, buying weapons and staging cruel terror attacks aimed against our citizens, as well as citizens of France, Lebanon, Mali and other countries”. “We will reveal it to the world”, Erdogan said in a televised address in Ankara.
“We will not rattle our sabres”.
The United States hopes that tensions between Moscow and Ankara will ease quickly, allowing Turkey to take a more prominent role inside the U.S.-led coalition’s air campaign, the first official said.
“We will not stop reminding them of what they did and they will not stop regretting their actions”.
“Do not believe the erroneous press reports that Russian Federation has halted TurkStream. Allah knows why they did it. Apparently Allah chose to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their sanity”, Putin said.
Alexander Novak, the energy minister, announced soon after the speech that Moscow was halting talks with Ankara over the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, a $10 billion construction project meant to funnel Russian gas to Europe.
The latest furious exchange comes as the two countries top diplomats met for the first face-to-face meeting between the two sides since the plane incident.
Russian Federation has retaliated by deploying long-range air defense missile systems to its base in Syria, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the border with Turkey.
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Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused Moscow of running a “Soviet propaganda machine” along the lines of the Communist Party mouthpiece daily Pravda.
