The amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from areas of Syria controlled by the Islamic State is economically insignificant, the United States said Friday, after Moscow accused Ankara of profiting from the trade.
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Moscow has imposed a series of economic sanctions against Ankara after Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border on November 24, sparking the biggest crisis between the two countries since the Cold War.
Putin said he will make sure Turkey’s leadership regrets the downing of Russia’s aircraft.
“Allah must have punished Turkey’s ruling clique by depriving it of sense and reason”, Putin said.
For the second time this week, the State Department rejected claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Turkey’s government is colluding with ISIS to smuggle oil across its borders.
Its photos posted recently include alleged ISIS oil-smuggling routes in the country, images linking Turkey’s president to the militants, and a cartoon of an octopus grabbing fistfuls of cash.
“I think part of what’s happening is that Israel has seen for some time now Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East as the USA retreated from the region”, said the Washington Institute’s Borshchevskaya.
“We just don’t believe that to be true in any way, shape or form”, a US State Department spokesman said.
“If somebody thought that after committing a treacherous war crime – the killing of our people – it would be possible to get away with mere restrictions on the trade of tomatoes, or some other restrictions … then they are grossly mistaken”, Putin said.
Turkey, which has been seeking to diversify its sources of imported energy to decrease its dependence on Russian Federation, may buy more than the planned 6 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) from Azerbaijan, Davutoğlu also said.
Erdogan on Thursday claimed the largest dealer for IS oil is a Syrian who also has a Russian passport.
Putin specifically targeted Turkey, accusing it of “allowing terrorists to earn money by selling oil stolen from Syria”.
Davutoglu reminded Moscow that Ankara refused to join Western sanctions against Russian Federation over Ukraine.
On Wednesday Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Anatoly Antonov and his colleagues, during an event at defense ministry headquarters in Moscow, showed foreign defense attaches based in Moscow satellite images purporting to show ISIL transporting oil to Turkey.
Mikhail Mizintsev, head of Russia’s National Center for Control of Defense, said the Defense Ministry would unveil more information next week about arms sales and terrorist training on Turkish soil, according to Pravda.
Ankara said that it is impossible to close the border and Daesh terrorists may boost their forces in response, according to The Hurriyet Daily News.
Speaking at the annual state of the nation speech in the Kremlin, Putin stressed Russian Federation is not planning to engage in military saber-rattling.
World leaders have urged both sides to avoid escalation.
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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.
