‘Allah is punishing Turkey’s rulers’, says Russian President Vladimir Putin

The shooting down by Turkish fighter jets of a Russian warplane on the Syrian border on November 24 has plunged relations between Moscow and Ankara into their biggest crisis since the Cold War. Putin said in the speech that ISIS uses the profits to finance its attacks “in Lebanon, France and Mali”.

The ruthless leader said “probably Allah alone knows why they did it” during his annual state of the nation address to both houses of Parliament in Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin hit out at the Turkish leadership saying, that “Allah” was punishing their leaders by stripping off their “sanity” and depriving them of “intelligence”. Even though Ankara has denied allegations, numerous world’s top news agencies admitted that Moscow’s claims were not groundless.

In a speech during a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu again defended Turkey’s action and said Turkey won’t apologize for defending its borders.

He said: “We are not planning to engage in military sabre-rattling”.

Putin specifically targeted Turkey, accusing it of “allowing terrorists to earn money by selling oil stolen from Syria”. We offered our condolences for the repatriated pilot and Minister Lavrov thanked us for our help.

Russian Federation has slapped a set of sanctions on Turkey in response to its refusal to make any apology for the downing incident, but stopped short of cutting off gas supply to 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.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from ISIS-held territory in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey would have cause to regret its actions “more than once”, he said, promising Russia’s retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor unsafe.

One was killed while parachuting to the ground – in circumstances yet to be fully explained – while a second was rescued by Russian and Syrian forces from the Syrian side of the border. Another Istanbul resident told RT that “the rumors have been circulating for a long time and everyone knows what’s going on, but nothing has been done about it”.