The Russian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Belgrade on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting – the first senior-level meeting since the incident – but the exchange was frosty.
Advertisement
After 15 years in which hundreds of British troops died serving as the main battlefield ally of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, many in Britain are wary of more war. If it is to be influential in the process, it’s important that Russian Federation stops attacking Turkmen positions in Syria.
In a televised state-of-the-nation speech yesterday, Putin ratcheted up the pressure, saying Turkey’s leaders would come to regret ordering the attack on the Russian plane. “Top political leadership of the country, President Erdogan and his family, are involved in this criminal business”, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in a press briefing.
For the second time this week, the State Department rejected claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Turkey’s government is colluding with ISIS to smuggle oil across its borders.
Speaking at a separate meeting with Russian military officers awarded with medals for their action in Syria, Putin said that “positive things have happened there thanks to you and your comrades, who have been working in the air, and, in fact, have been leading the Syrian military units”. “We always considered, and will always consider, treachery to be the ultimate and lowest act”. I would like them to remember this – those in Turkey who shot our pilots in the back, those hypocrites who tried to justify their actions and cover up for terrorists.
“We know who are stuffing pockets in Turkey and letting terrorists prosper from the sale of oil they stole in Syria”, Putin said while addressing the Kremlin audience on December 3.
Russia’s heaviest bombardments are now being focused on those very rebels, many of them Turkmen fighters, trying to make sure that Turkey doesn’t even achieve that.
Tensions between Turkey and Russian Federation continue to escalate as both sides beef up their military strength at the Turkish-Syrian border, according to Voice of America.
“If anyone thinks that having committed this despicable war crime, the murder of our people, they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or restrictions on their construction and other sectors, they are profoundly mistaken”, he told the audience in the Kremlin.
And on Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense presented the most potentially damning charge against Ankara – that Turkey, under the lead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family, was participating in and facilitating the ISIS oil trade.
The Turkish president angrily denied all the accusations, but on Thursday Putin repeated them, with the additional suggestion that Erdogan and other Turkish leaders were being subjected to some sort of divine punishment that has impaired their judgment. As a NATO member, the USA could be obligated by treaty to protect Turkey if it declares Russian Federation has attacked it. Marco Rubio claims that America must protect Turkey from Russian Federation. Additionally, Moscow announced that its Su-34 bombers, which operate in Syria, now carry air-to-air missiles for “self-defense”.
Will the US withdraw from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation?
Advertisement
The United States does not give data on the number or type of missions conducted by Turkish air force flights in Syria.
