Turkey to regret shooting down Russian jet: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday vowed that the Turkish leadership would be made to regret the downing of one of Moscow’s warplanes, as Ankara presented its condolences for the death of a Russian pilot in the incident.

The Russian foreign minister says Russia will hand over evidence of Turkey’s oil dealings with ISIS to the United Nations and other countries interested in the matter.

“Adding a personal insult to Erdogan and his government, Putin said “Only Allah, most likely, knows why they did this”.

“If we get political transition in place, we empower every nation and every entity to come together, the Syrian army together with the opposition, together with all the surrounding countries, together with Russian Federation, with the USA and others to go and fight Daesh”, said Kerry, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“We know for example who in Turkey fills their pockets and allows terrorists to make money from the stolen oil in Syria”, Putin said.

For his part, Putin said Russian Federation is ready and willing to work with France in any anti-terrorism effort.

“Allah only knows, I suppose, why they did it. And probably, Allah has made a decision to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their mind and reason”. The widows of the marine and pilot killed after Turkey shot the plane down were in the audience.

The day before, Russia’s defence ministry had called journalists to a briefing at its command centre, showing slides and satellite imagery claiming to show proof that Turkey was profiting from the trade in Isis oil.

Meanwhile, Putin stressed that Russia considers the Turkish people friendly and Moscow has no intention to engage in saber-rattling with Ankara over the downing of the Russian jet. He said Russia’s exchange rate has stabilized, inflation had dropped, and capital flight has decreased.

The bulk of Putin’s speech was dedicated to economic proposals that touched on a wide range of issues from corruption to jury reform and economic growth.

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. But this has been complicated by the Turkish downing of the Russian fighter jet and Washington’s insistence that Moscow drop its backing for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to continue to play a role in any political solution to the crisis there.

Putin said in his speech that Russia’s air campaign in Syria, which started on September 30, is meant to fend off a terror threat to Russian Federation posed by militant groups in Syria that include people from Russian Federation.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the president’s statement didn’t mean that Russian military officers have been put in charge of some Syrian army units but referred to a “coordination of Syrian army’s offensive operations with air support”.