Putin invites UK experts to eye jet’s black box

Shoigu told Putin that Syrian army forces had overtaken the area near the border with Turkey where a Turkish jet shot down a Russian warplane on Nov 24. “In fact, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk estimated that only 30 percent of Russia’s airstrikes in Syria are targeting the terror group”, Fox News reported.

ISIS, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and a collection of rebel groups fighting both of them have been locked in a grueling civil war in Syria for several years.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a war on terrorism in late July, but since then Turkish forces have directed their fight nearly entirely to trying to militarily crush the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

McGurk also stated the coalition’s top priority was to completely secure territory and the border between Turkey.

“Because this is a direct attack on a foreign state”.

Russian Federation did not respond to the downing of its plane and the death of its two servicemen with a military strike against Turkey.

“Vladimir Putin invited British specialists to take part in decoding flight data recorders of the downed Su-24”, said the Kremlin following talks over the phone between the Russian leader and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“Unfortunately the Russian operations are not helping to clean this region from Daesh”, he said.

Ankara sent the troops to counter an increased threat from Islamic State militants to Turkish military trainers in the area, Davutoglu said, describing the deployment as “an act of solidarity”.

Moscow’s relations with Turkey have been badly strained over the downing of the jet.

The more powerful and precise Russian airstrikes in Syria become, “the more criticism our colleagues express, trying to deflect the public’s attention”, the spokesman said.

Turkey says the Russian jet strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings, while Moscow insists it did not cross from Syria and has accused Ankara of a planned provocation.

In a roundtable interview with reporters on Wednesday, a senior Turkish official accused Russian Federation of conducting an “ethnic cleansing” campaign in the northern part of Syria.

The two leaders also discussed ramping up cooperation “in this context”, the statement said without providing further details.

Alex Kokcharov, a Russian Federation and Ukraine analyst for IHS Country Risk, said Moscow is throwing serious money and resources behind the propaganda campaign, the goals of which are at least twofold: political and commercial.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu delivered the black box to the Kremlin on Wednesday, but was told by Mr Putin not to allow it to be opened until global experts were available to examine it in the hope that they will confirm Moscow’s version of events.

Mikhail Klimentyev/AP Russian President Vladimir Putin brought up the possibility of using nuclear warheads in Syria.