“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.
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“We have seen significant swings in how much they [the Syrian government] are buying at any given point”, said the official, who added that buying “spiked” when there was an oil “crunch” in government-controlled areas.
“We don’t know what North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have in the bag but we are waiting for retaliation to the plane being shot down”, said one onlooker.
Erdogan has denied the claims as “slander”.
The two presidents, who forged a strong friendship in over a decade in power, have traded a slew of insults since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on November 24 on the Syrian border for alleged repeated violations of its airspace.
Erdogan reacted with an accusation of Russian involvement in the illegal oil trade. The Soviet media – built on this tradition – was used as the most effective weapon in political, economical, cultural and ideological aspects to make propaganda in the Cold War era.
Turkish and Russian foreign ministers were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation meeting in the Serbian capital Belgrade on Thursday, the first meeting at a senior level since the plane’s downing. The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday released an array of satellite and aerial images which it said shows hundreds of oil trucks streaming across the border.
Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited Qatar and Azerbaijan respectively this week to reach agreements on importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and expediting the construction of a natural gas pipeline that carries Azerbaijan’s gas in the Caspian Sea to Turkey and Europe.
He pointed out that unlike other countries, Turkey did not launch sanctions against Russian Federation over the Ukraine crisis.
Fredrik Wesslau, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said that the dispute had turned so personal because the legitimacy of both men depended on “coming out on top”.
“Our hope is that they avoid making unfounded claims”, he said. One of the two pilots of the plane was killed by militants inside Syria – some of them associated with Turkey – as he was parachuting down from his targeted plane.
U.S. officials said that overall coalition air operations had been unaffected by the tensions between Turkey and Russian Federation.
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“We will send them to the next world on a one-way ticket”, Kadyrov said, according to Russian news agencies. And yet, Putin claims that Russian Federation is not “planning to engage in military sabre-rattling”.
