Russian President Vladimir Putin fired off an angry tirade against Turkey on Thursday, ruling out any reconciliation with its leaders and accusing Ankara of shooting down a Russian warplane to impress the United States. “We’ll have to go for further sanctions”.
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Putin, 63, a former Soviet KGB officer, has ruled Russian Federation as either president or prime minister for 16 years. “We support their efforts in fighting ISIL with Russian air strikes”, he said.
Riffing on the theme of political stability, Putin said there were no surprises in store.
In October, Trump said that he and Putin “are very different” but opined that “I would, at the same time, get along very well with him”.
Some of his harshest words were reserved for Turkey. More than 9,000 people have been killed.
In practice, Ukrainian goods destined to the Russian market will be subjected to customs tariffs of an average of 7 percent, Putin said.
Vladimir Putin says he would welcome a President Donald Trump.
The government in Moscow imposed economic sanctions on Turkey after the downing of the plane, which triggered the most serious clash between Russian Federation and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in decades. He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russian Federation.
“It is none of our business to estimate this work of his”, the Russian president said.
“Whether there are signs of corruption in Federation Internationale de Football Association, the investigation must show”. He said that the nation has won the right to host the football tournament in an “honest competition”. – Putin on embattled Federation Internationale de Football Association official Sepp Blatter.
Putin, during the three-hour spectacle in which he took questions from hundreds of reporters, singled out Republican front-runner Donald Trump for praise.
And in remarks closely mirroring Trump’s assessment of the campaign, the Russian leader called Trump “the absolute leader of the presidential race”, according to the Russian TASS news agency.
At the same time, he said that athletes who aren’t involved in doping should not be punished alongside the violators.
“On the whole it suits us”, he said. “Of course we welcome it”, Putin said.
“A military aircraft had been shot down and people died”. “We’ve never said that there are no people deciding military issues in Ukraine, but this does not mean there are regular Russian troops there”.
He also said he does not know whether Russian Federation needs a permanent military base in Syria.
He added that he believed the Syrian authorities would also accept the draft resolution urging both sides to compromise.
In comments littered with crude language, Putin dismissed the possibility that the downing of the warplane over the Turkish-Syrian border last month was an accident, calling it a “hostile act”.
“It is hard for us to reach agreement with the current Turkish leadership, if at all possible”, he said, during his annual news conference in Moscow.
Moscow had been particularly outraged that Turkey hadn’t tried to explain its action and immediately turned to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation for help instead, Putin told his end-of-year news conference in Moscow.
Mr Putin said he sees no need for a significant shake-up of his Cabinet.
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He said the country was recovering from the worst of its economic crisis caused by the collapse of global oil prices, but admitted economic forecasts would have to be adjusted.
