Minutes after Putin had finished speaking, his energy minister,
Alexander Novak, said Russia was halting talks with Ankara on the
Turkish Stream gas pipeline, a symbolic move designed to emphasize
the strength of Kremlin anger.
Putin, who made the comments during his annual state of the nation
speech to his country's political elite on Thursday, said Russia
would not forget the Nov. 24 incident and that he continued to
regard it as a terrible betrayal.
"We are not planning to engage in military saber-rattling (with
Turkey)," said Putin, after asking for a moment's silence for the
two Russian servicemen killed in the immediate aftermath of the
incident, and for Russian victims of terrorism.
"But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime,
the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some
measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction
and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken."
Turkey would have cause to regret its actions "more than once," he
said, promising Russia's retaliatory actions would be neither
hysterical nor dangerous.
The rhetoric Putin used will dash hopes of any early rapprochement
and deepen a rift between the two countries.
"It appears that Allah decided to punish the ruling clique of Turkey
by depriving them of wisdom and judgment," he said.
Repeating a call for a new broad international coalition against
terrorism, Putin, in an overt reference to Turkey, called on
countries to avoid "double standards, contacts with any terrorist
organizations, and any attempts to use them for their own ends."
Turkey has strongly rejected Russian allegations it has any links
with Islamic State militants. On Wednesday Russia made it personal,
saying Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's family was directly
profiting from Islamic State oil smuggling.
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Russia has already banned some Turkish food imports, including
selected fruit and vegetables, as part of a wider retaliatory
sanctions package.
Nine days after the incident, Moscow and Ankara still have starkly
different versions of what happened and Putin is furious Erdogan has
not apologized for the episode, something the Turkish leader has
said he will not do.
Turkey insists the SU-24 fighter bomber violated its air space and
was warned repeatedly before being shot down. Russia says the plane,
which was taking part in the Kremlin's air campaign against
militants in Syria, had not strayed from Syrian air space.
Erdogan sought a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a climate
change conference in Paris last week, but was snubbed. Nor has the
Russian leader taken his phone calls.
(Reporting by Christian Lowe, Dmitry Solovyov, Masha Tsvetkova,
Lidia Kelly, Denis Dyomkin, Daria Korsunskaya and Denis Pinchuk;
Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Peter Graff)
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