Russian Federation on Sunday said one of its warships in the Aegean Sea fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing vessel in order to avoid a collision.
Advertisement
According to the statement, one of Russia’s warships, the destroyer Smetlivy, was forced to fire the shots when the Turkish ship failed to obey previous warnings to change course and approached within 600 meters of the Smetlivy.
After the downing of the warplane, which led to the deaths of a pilot and another serviceman who attempted to rescue him, Russian Federation introduced economic sanctions against Turkey and beefed up its firepower at its airbase in Syria.
“Despite repeated attempts of the crew of the Smetlivy, the Turkish fishing boat did not establish radio contact with the Russian sailors and did not respond to specific semaphore signals and signal flares”, the statement said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who on Friday called on Russia for calm, had a brief meeting with senior Russian official Valentina Matvienko in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, to defuse tension between the two countries.
Putin accused the Turkish government of downing the fighter jet to protect oil trade between the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamic State group in Syria, which Russian Federation is targeting in Syria, among other extremist and rebel groups.
“It is merely thanks to a happy coincidence that we were able to avoid a tragedy”, the statement added.
The General Staff has prohibited Turkish military personnel from going to Russian Federation on vacation as a precautionary measure, given the diplomatic crisis between the countries, Turkish media reports said on Sunday.
The incident comes amid Russian-Turkish tensions following the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber by the Turkish Air Force over Syria on November 24.
Advertisement
Turkey say that the Russian jet entered their airspace despite receiving ten warnings in five minutes, while Russia say that they did not cross the border and no warnings were received.
