Russian warship fires warning shots at Turkish boat

“At 9:03 a.m. Moscow time, the ship’s sailors on duty detected a Turkish vessel at a distance of some 1,000 meters that was approaching the starboard side of the anchored surveillance ship Smetlivy”, the Russian Defense Ministry’s press service said. The company claimed in a statement that a trade vessel flying a Turkish flag had created “an emergency situation” and had not responded to radio signals.

The flight takes place within the framework of the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). So when the Koroglu Balikcilik was 600 meters (660 yards) away, warning shots were fired from the destroyer and the Turkish ship quickly changed course, passing within 540 meters (590 yards).

A Russian destroyer fired warning shots at a Turkish vessel in the Aegean on Sunday to avoid a collision and summoned the Turkish military attache over the incident.

A bilateral summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan planned for December 15 in St. Petersburg will not now happen, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday said in an interview with Italian media that his country would like good relations with Russian Federation, but there was a limit to Turkey’s patience.

The two countries have been at odds over Syria since the early days of the five-year conflict, but differences boiled over with the Russian military intervention to bolster the Assad regime.

Ties between Moscow and Ankara have sharply deteriorated since the downing of the Russian jet on November 24, a move described by Putin as “a dastardly stab in the back”.