Turkey to regret shooting down Russian fighter jet many times, warns Putin

More punitive measures by Russia against Turkey are coming, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in his annual address Thursday to his country’s Federal Assembly.

The latest Russian claims come amid growing tensions between Moscow and Ankara after Turkey last week shot down a Russian warplane it said violated its airspace from Syria, a charge Russia denies.

“However, we will not engage in saber-rattling”, he said, immediately after mentioning that their army was already mobilized in the Middle East.

“He asserted that “if someone thinks that after committing heinous war crimes, the murder of our people, it will end with (an embargo on) tomatoes and limitations in construction and other fields, then they are deeply mistaken”.

Nine days after the incident, Moscow and Ankara still have starkly different versions of what happened, and Putin is furious Erdogan has not apologized for the episode, something the Turkish leader has said he will not do.

But the official announcement of the break-off in the talks dealt another blow to Russian-Turkish ties, as Putin lamented the damage to a relationship that he has spent years nurturing.

The operation has so far failed to dislodge the militants from a swath of territory where they have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims, although Washington and its allies say the attacks have helped to halt the fighters’ advance.

“We know why that happened”, he said.

“No one has the right to slander Turkey, especially the slander of Turkey buying IS oil”.

He accused Turkey of a “treacherous war crime” in downing a Russian warplane at the border with Syria.

He pointed out that if Russian Federation wants to restore the relations with Turkey, it should open diplomatic channels for negotiations.

After the shooting of the Russian plane, which caused the death of one pilot, the Turkish President told journalists today that problems such as the one between Turkey and Russia “should be solved diplomatically”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu were expected to meet briefly Thursday afternoon in Belgrade, Serbia, on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Co-operation meeting, the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.

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.

REUTERS/Umit BektasTurkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, Turkey, November 25, 2015.