President Vladimir Putin called Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet “a stab in the back” carried out by the accomplices of terrorists, saying the incident would have serious consequences for Moscow’s relations with Ankara.
Speaking in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi before a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Putin said the downed plane, which Turkey said it had repeatedly warned, had been attacked inside Syria when it was 1 kilometre from the Turkish border and had come down 4 kilometres inside Syria. Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday after repeated warnings over air space violations, but Moscow said it could prove the jet had not left Syrian air space. It was the first time a Nato member’s armed forces have downed a Russian or Soviet military aircraft since the 1950s.