IS oil smuggling to Turkey insignificant

“But if anyone thinks that having committed this bad war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken”.

“We know who are stuffing pockets in Turkey and letting terrorists prosper from the sale of oil they stole in Syria”, Putin said in a televised address to over 1,000 delegates of the Russian Federal Assembly Thursday morning.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin warning North Atlantic Treaty Organisation of “serious consequences” for shooting down a Russian warplane last week, analysts have every reason to believe that Moscow is preparing to start a nuclear war with the U.S.-led Alliance over the incident.

Hours after the British parliament agreed to join a coalition fighting the militant group, British bombers attacked six targets in the Omar oil fields in eastern Syria controlled by Islamic State.

“These countries are in the deep freeze, which will make the USA job of brokering something in Vienna all the more hard”, said Gordon. He denied yesterday Russian assertions that Moscow had suspended talks with Turkey on the planned TurkStream natural gas pipeline project, saying Turkey was the one to halt work.

The Russian defense ministry claimed this week that it has proof Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefitting from smuggling oil from Islamic State-held territory.

This was the second time this week the State Dept. has pushed back on the Russian government, despite the Russian defense ministry presenting satellite imagery and drone footage purportedly showing oil trucks crossing the Syrian-Turkish border.

They also showed strikes on ISIS oil storage facilities.

He pointed out that unlike other countries, Turkey did not launch sanctions against Russian Federation over the Ukraine crisis.

“Our hope is that they avoid making unfounded claims”, he said. The militants shot and killed the downed plane’s pilot while he was descending on parachute and also killed a Russian marine who was involved in rescuing the plane’s co-pilot.

Fredrik Wesslau, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said that the dispute had turned so personal because the legitimacy of both men depended on “coming out on top”.

Following Monday’s meeting with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of a climate summit in Paris, Putin said they have a shared understanding on how to move toward a political settlement in Syria and discussed efforts to compile one list of extremist groups and another of legitimate political opposition. For example, the Russian Sputnik News Agency claimed recently that France’s Permanent Representative to NATO, Jean-Baptiste Mattei, said that “Turkey axes operations against Daesh”; however, Mattei himself clarified that this Sputnik story was a “lie”.