Putin Refuses To Meet with Erdogan in Paris

Russian President Vladimir Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said Friday that the Russian President will not meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until there is an apology for Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian Su-24.

“We see Turkey’s unwillingness to simply apologize for the incident with the plane,” Ushakov told reporters when asked why Putin has refused to talk with Erdogan.

While Putin is not likely to meet Erdogan in Paris on the sidelines of the Climate summit, he will be meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the Syrian crisis and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He will also meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel for talks about Syria and Ukraine, Ushakov said.

Denouncing the shooting down of the Russian Su-24, Putin’s Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Rossiya 24 television channel, “Now, when there has been no invasion, nobody can treacherously shoot the Russian plane in its tail. The Russian president said yesterday that everything about the Turkish president is a concern of Turkish voters; it is not our business. Our concerns are, of course, bilateral Russian-Turkish relations that have been badly damaged.”

“Russia was unprecedentedly challenged and the response is in line with this threat,” he said.

He also said that the hotline between Moscow and Ankara has been suspended. “The hotline, which was created especially for prevention, was halted,” Peskov said. “From our point of view, the level of predictability of the Turkish leadership is very hard to assess.”

The speaker of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin said Nov. 27 that Russia has the right to militarily retaliate for Turkey’s downing of the Russian Su-24 warplane. Naryshkin told Romanian television station Digi24: “This is intentional murder of our soldiers and this deed must be punished.”

“We know those who did this and they must be judged. At the same time, the response from the Russian side will surely follow, in line with international law. And aside from this, Russia has also the right to military response,” added Naryshkin, who was attending a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in Bucharest.

“Even yesterday, military resources were allocated, (for) the S400 Triumph, which is the most advanced missile defense system, with the role to maintain flight safety of Russian planes, of our military and air forces whose task is to destroy terrorist infrastructure of the so-called ISIL and other organizations operating in Syria.”