Turkey ‘knew’ they shot down a Russian jet: Vladimir Putin

Peskov earlier said that Erdoğan had telephoned Putin seven or eight hours after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday.

But Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said Ankara did not need to apologize “on an occasion that we are right”, adding that he had already said “sorry” in a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Speaking after a working dinner in the Kremlin, Mr Hollande said they had agreed to target only Islamic State and similar jihadi groups in Syria.

Germany said it will deploy Tornado reconnaissance jets to support France in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

Russia’s defense ministry meanwhile said it had suspended all cooperation with the Turkish military, including a hotline set up to share information on Russian airstrikes in Syria, the TASS news agency reported.

“I propose doing all this in a period of two days so that we can move to setting up the appropriate procedures as quickly as possible”, he told government ministers.

“It was not clear if Turkey had received any replies from the Russian pilots but did not release them, or if the Russian pilots never replied to the warnings or if the Russians never even heard the warnings”.

Mr Putin has also accused Turkey of buying oil from the Islamic State jihadist group, whose financing heavily relies on the sale of energy resources. The request came despite reports saying that Moscow is planning to sever economic ties with Turkey, which shot down the Russian plane because it allegedly violated Turkish borders, despite warnings.

“The necessary discussions are now taking place”, Davutoglu wrote after chairing a meeting on Thursday of Turkey’s High Military Council and a flurry of diplomacy within the Western alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organisation of which Turkey is a member.

Turkey’s president has said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments after he met in Moscow with French President Francois Hollande were “unacceptable”. Russia is a major destination for Turkish exports and Turkey imports vast amounts of Russian gas.

Russian Federation was ready to cooperate with other groups ready to fight Isis and he reaffirmed Moscow’s long-standing view that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was also an ally in the fight against terrorism.

But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck a defiant tone.