In this year’s annual State of the Nation address, Putin defended his decision to start dropping bombs in Syria in late September, claiming that Russian Federation must fight terrorism overseas to prevent it from penetrating Russia’s borders.
Advertisement
Russia will not forget Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian bomber, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday in his address to the Federal Assembly.
Putin said that Russian Federation will take other retaliatory moves against Turkey, but will not engage in saber rattling. But if someone thinks that after committing heinous war crimes, the murder of our people, it will end with tomatoes and limitations in construction and other fields, then they are deeply mistaken, ‘ Putin added.
The shooting down of the jet by the Turkish air force on Tuesday was one of the most serious clashes between a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and Russian Federation, and further complicated global efforts to battle Islamic State militants.
The briefing didn’t present direct evidence that Erdogan and his family were involved in the trade – an accusation that the Turkish leader has emphatically denied – but Antonov said, “According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country, President Erdogan and his family, are involved in this criminal business”.
Moscow says its warplanes have been targeting terrorist groups near Syria’s border with Turkey, while Ankara says the Russian airstrikes have been aimed at moderate militant groups made of ethnic Turks who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
No, this time the Russian president’s first and foremost concern was Turkey.
Turkey said it shot down the plane after it violated its airspace for 17 seconds despite repeated warnings, while Russian Federation has insisted that the aircraft has stayed in Syria’s airspace.
On Wednesday, Russian Defense Ministry officials published the images, which, they claimed, showed tanker trucks transporting oil from Daesh-controlled installations in Syria and Iraq to Turkey.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it was “a little ironic” for the Russian leader to point a finger at others.
The footage has emerged just days after a war of words over Turkish alleged links to ISIS’s oil trade broke out between Vladimir Putin and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In his speech Thursday, Putin offered thinly veiled criticism of recent Western policy toward the Middle East, saying that “previously successful and stable countries of the Middle East and North Africa – Syria, Libya, Iraq – have become a zone of anarchy and chaos posing a threat to the whole world”.
“Only Allah knows why they did this”, he added.
During his address, however, Putin appeared to downplay the involvement of the military in Russia’s response.
Advertisement
Another Russian serviceman was killed in the rescue operation.
