Russian, Turkish foreign ministers hold talks in Serbia amid tension over

The Turkish and Russian foreign ministers are to meet on the sidelines of an worldwide gathering in Serbia, according to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was also in the Serbian capital for the annual ministerial council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where he called on Russian Federation to back the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

“We will work for it non-stop”.

“Let’s decrease tensions with our rhetoric”, Davutoglu said.

He denounced Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet at the border with Syria as a “treacherous war crime”. “Turkey has not lost its moral values as to buy oil from a terror organization”, Erdogan said in Wednesday’s speech at Qatar University, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group, shortly after the Russian Defense Ministry made the claims.

In a speech during a visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu again defended Turkey’s action and said Turkey won’t apologize for defending its borders.

With relations between Russia and Turkey somewhat cold, Russian energy company Gazprom said it was reviewing the status of a pipeline through the Baltic Sea.

In his remarks, Davutoglu said that Turkey and Azerbaijan will accelerate implementation of the TANAP project construction.

“Allah must have punished Turkey’s ruling clique by depriving it of sense and reason”, Putin said.

Many Turkish food exports are affected, Turks will no longer enjoy visa-free travel to Russia, and Russians can no longer go on package holidays to Turkey. “And John Kerry agreed with me that closing of the Turkish-Syrian border and the Turkish-Iraqi border, as all this is interconnected, is among the most urgent measures”. Last month’s downing of a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 fighter jet enroute to Syria has driven a wedge between the two.

Earlier Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said Turkey could directly appeal to Russian Federation for negotiations over the proposed Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline – if the project is a priority for Ankara.