On Thursday, the Associated Press reported, Hollande said he and Putin “agreed on a very important issue: To strike the terrorists only, Daesh [the Islamic State’s Arab acronym] and the jihadi groups only, and not to strike the forces and the groups that are fighting against the terrorists”.
Advertisement
The Kremlin has not yet revealed whether President Putin will accept Erdogan’s offer.
Hollande called it a “serious incident, obviously regrettable”, while Putin lashed out at the USA over the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey, saying the US should have prevented its coalition ally Turkey from making such a move.
Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M inside Syria on Tuesday, plunging the relations with Russia into crisis.
Mr Erdogan previously said Turkey had not specifically targeted Russian Federation when it shot down the plane in “an automatic response” in line with its rules of engagement, and suggested the military may have acted differently had it known where the jet was from.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with his French counterpart Francois Hollande during a news conference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, November 26, 2015.
The West has accused Moscow of targeting mostly Western- backed rebel groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad instead of Islamic State.
Also Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow had made a decision to suspend visa-free travel with Turkey.
Russian Federation has vowed to carry out broad retaliatory measures against Turkey’s economy to avenge the downing of its warplane by Turkey earlier this week.
Hollande’s talks in Moscow are the latest push in his diplomatic offensive aimed at forming a grand coalition against the organisation of Islamic militants who control parts of Iraq and Syria.
Russia has deployed its advanced S-400 air defence system in Syria, the Russian defence ministry said today, with the weapons to be used to cover the area around its airbase in coastal Latakia.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s aide, said on Friday: “We see Turkey’s unwillingness to simply apologise for the incident with the plane”.
“We have said for five years now that Turkey helps to support terrorists for ideological reasons, stabbing us in the back every day over a span of five years”.
Advertisement
Mr Erdogan later said: “There is a summit in Paris, I believe he (Putin) will also attend”.
