Russian President Vladimir Putin said from the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris this week the Kremlin considered it a “criminal action”.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is meeting with his Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Belgrade, TASS reported on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member states agreed at a meeting in Brussels to continue developing measures to “assure Turkey’s security”.
Russian Federation has announced wide-ranging trade sanctions against Turkey, in retaliation for the downing of an Su-24 bomber on the Syrian border on 24 November by Turkish F-16 jets.
“We discussed the fight against ISIL with Kerry”, the minister said.
Russian Federation had already said that TurkStream’s planned capacity would be just 32 Bcm/year, down from the original plan for 63 Bcm/year, while Turkey has still not approved the project at governmental level.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has now said Ankara will speed up work on a pipeline called Tanap, to take delivery of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea. Davutoglu says his country can’t be “brought to its…” Russian leader Putin has applied several economic sanctions against Turkey. Thus, Azerbaijan will be able to export even large amounts of natural gas to Turkey and then to Europe.
Ditching the pipeline project is likely to impact both sides.
Asked whether Azerbaijan can be one such conduit, Luft said that the Russians don’t seem to want to rely on another one of their former republics after the experience with Ukraine. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on parachute and also killed a Russian marine who was involved in rescuing the plane’s co-pilot.
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The plane incident has plunged the two countries’ relationship into a crisis, with Russian Federation demanding an official apology from the Turkish leadership.
