Russian Federation has already banned some Turkish food imports in retaliation as part of a sanctions package, and has accused Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family of benefiting from the smuggling of oil from Islamic State controlled territory in Syria and Iraq, allegations Turkey denies.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after the COP21 UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris, France, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday that “there is no Turkish government complicity in some operation to buy illegal oil” from IS, adding, “We just don’t believe that to be true in any way, shape or form”.
The Kremlin dismissed these claims as “rubbish” and insists the aircraft had stayed in Syrian airspace, from where it is carrying out airstrikes.
While Putin has repeatedly said that the Russian troops in Syria wouldn’t engage in ground combat, the statement signaled a high degree of the Russian military’s involvement in coordinating the Syrian army’s action.
“But if anyone thinks that after committing the treacherous war crime, the killing of our people, they will get away with (the ban on imports) of tomatoes or some restrictions on construction and other industries, they are deeply mistaken”.
Turkey would have cause to regret its actions “more than once”, he said, promising Russia’s retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor risky.
Negotiations over the project to pipe Russian gas to Turkey under the Black Sea have been floundering since Moscow launched air strikes in Syria in late September in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which Ankara fiercely opposes.
The Turkish and Russian foreign ministers are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation meeting in the Serbian capital Belgrade on Thursday, the first meeting between senior Turkish officials since the plane’s downing. The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday released an array of satellite and aerial images which it said show hundreds of oil trucks streaming across the border.
But the official announcement of the break-off in the talks dealt another blow to floundering Russian-Turkish ties, as Putin lamented the damage to a relationship that he has spent years nurturing.
“They were called Pravda lies”, he said, referring to the daily newspaper that was the mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
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Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday accused Moscow of running a “Soviet propaganda machine”.
