Russian, Syrian special forces rescue Russian pilot: Syrian media

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“The direct consequences could lead to our refusal to take part in a whole raft of important joint projects and Turkish companies losing their positions on the Russian market”, Medvedev said in a statement.

Russian and Syrian special forces have freed the second pilot of a Russian warplane shot down by Turkey and he is now at a Russian airbase, the defence minister said Wednesday. One of the two pilots was killed and captured by Syrian rebels who said they were searching for the other.

Shortly after the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed Ankara as “accomplices of terrorists”. The Turkish border, at its closest, is less than 50 miles away. All ground-strike missions will also now be covered by fighter aircraft.

“But Russia’s strategy is aggressive and risky”, Italian foreign policy analyst Maurizio Molinari said. He defended his country’s move to shoot down the plane saying: “no one should expect Turkey to stay silent to border violations or the violation of its rights”.

Davutoglu told his party’s lawmakers on Wednesday that Turkey didn’t know the nationality of the plane that was brought down on Tuesday until Moscow announced it was Russian.

Turkey had bitterly condemned Russia’s campaign, saying it was aimed at hitting Syrian rebels and buttressing the Assad regime rather than hurting IS jihadists.

Putin said the plane fell in Syrian territory four kilometres from the border and “did not in any way threaten Turkey”. Estonia has said its sovereign airspace had been violated by Russian aircraft five times this year.

“The sale of tour products on the Turkey track has been suspended due to the report issued by Rosturizm on November 24, 2015”, Marina Makarkova, head of the public relations department at Coral Travel, said. “The facts and the circumstances are not, of course, yet known”.

Trade between Russian Federation and Turkey was over $30 billion at the end of 2014.

The warplane crashed in a mountainous area in the northern countryside of Latakia province, where there had been aerial bombardment earlier and where pro-government forces have been battling insurgents on the ground, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

With world leaders calling for calm, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that he was not seeking to escalate tensions with Moscow.

The news comes as global tensions continue to rise over the incident.

On Tuesday, Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24M Fencer bomber. “I will ask the commanders to keep me at the air base”.

“This is Turkish air force speaking – en garde”.

But Moscow has released their own version, which shows the SU-24 never leaving the Syrian skies.

“Lavrov has just said in an interview with Russian and foreign media that he had made no commitments to meet with the Turkish foreign minister during the forthcoming OSCE ministerial session”.

Syria’s government uses the term terrorists to describe all insurgents fighting against it. A Russian marine sent to recover the crew was also killed in an attack by rebels.

Two helicopters were used in the operation. It said the pilot is alive and arrived Wednesday morning at the Hemeimeem air base, near the city of Latakia.

The USA president charged that Russian air activity near the Turkey-Syria border has contributed to the crisis. The systems are capable of targeting Turkish jets with deadly precision. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cancelled a visit to Turkey which had been planned for Wednesday.