Putin swears to make Turkey regret plane downing

President Vladimir Putin has raised the temperature in an increasingly bitter confrontation with Turkey over the downing of a Russian warplane last week, saying the country’s “ruling gang” has lost reason, and threatening more punitive measures following economic sanctions.

“We know who are stuffing pockets in Turkey and letting terrorists prosper from the sale of oil they stole in Syria”, Putin said.

“We’ll remind them of what they did, more than once”, Putin warned.

In the meantime, “we need to further strengthen the trust between government and business, to improve the business climate in the country”. We are perfectly aware of what action is to be taken.

Russian Federation has accused Erdogan and his family of personally profiting from the oil trade with IS, which controls a large chunk of Syrian territory including many oil fields.

Putin, whose administration has already announced sanctions against Ankara including a ban on the import of some Turkish foods, and reintroduced visas for visitors from the country, insisted Turkey would be made to regret its actions.

With U.S. President Barack Obama’s move to place American fighter jets on the Turkish-Syrian border to “target Russian planes”, the tensions between the U.S. and Russia could spiral into a “devastating nuclear war”, according to a U.S. representative.

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.

Pravda also reports that the chief of the Central Directorate of the General Staff claimed Russia’s military efforts have halved IS’s income from trading oil. He said: “Perhaps only Allah knows why they did this”.

Putin stressed that Moscow’s anger over the downing of the jet is directed at particular individuals and not at the Turkish people.

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.

Erdogan this week visited the Gulf country Qatar where he agreed a deal for LNG purchases, while his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu travelled to energy-rich Azerbaijan. Russia denied the charge.In the attack, a Russian pilot onboard the jet was killed.

Turkey has been backed by its allies North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United States, with the USA state department reiterating on Monday that its data “corroborated” Turkey’s version of events. Ankara claims the Russian plane, which was on a bombing mission in northern Syria, ignored warnings to leave its airspace.

Starting this year’s speech with a minute’s silence for Russian victims of terrorism, including the 224 who died when a bomb blew up a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai desert on October 31, Putin directed his anger towards his Turkish counterpart.