One of the Russian pilots was killed by militants in Syria after ejecting from the plane, while his crewmate was rescued by Syrian army commandos. “We still have not heard any articulate apologies from Turkey’s highest political level nor any proposals to compensate for the harm and damage nor promises to punish criminals responsible for their crimes”, Putin said at the Kremlin.
Advertisement
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that Turkey would have acted differently if it had known a warplane its forces downed on the Syrian border was Russian. He denied claims the jet had violated Turkish airspace and warnings had been given.
Most of the audio is garbled and barely comprehensible, but the tone of the voice gets more agitated as the warnings appear to go unnoticed.
He urged Islamic countries to stand together against Islamic State terror and not let terrorists to misuse Islam.
The audio that was released only involved Turkish warnings, no replies by a Russian pilot. But Russia insists the plane never strayed from Syrian territory.
Asked about the audio recordings released by Turkey, Zakharova suggested they were fake.
Erdogan, meanwhile, challenged Russian Federation to prove its accusation that Turkey is buying oil and gas from IS, calling the claims “shameful” and making the counterclaim that IS was selling its oil to Assad.
Russia is open to an worldwide anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition with the United States, France, and even Turkey, a Russian diplomat revealed on Wednesday.
Mr Putin responded to the plane’s downing by ordering the deployment of powerful long-range air defence missiles to a Russian air base in Syria.
“In accordance with the decision of Russia’s supreme commander-in-chief, an air defense complex S-400 has been promptly delivered to the Russian air base in Hmeimim in Syria”, the news agency quoted Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. Russian Federation has already restricted tourism, left Turkish trucks stranded at the border and announced the confiscation of large quantities of Turkish food imports.
The move is expected to become a major nuisance for Turkey which over the past 10 months exported agricultural produce and food worth just over $1 billion (940 million euros) to Russian Federation, down a fifth from the same period a year ago.
Advertisement
Isachenkov reported from Moscow.
