Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border, claiming the jet had repeatedly flouted its air space regulation.
The warplane was reportedly crashed by a Turkish fighter jet when it was about one kilometre away from Syria, killing the two pilots onboard, Reuters reports.
The incident was said to be a major clash between a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member-country and Russia in the last 50 years.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said the attack was carried out by “the accomplices of terrorists” and warned that it would have “serious consequences” on the relationship of the country with Turkey.
According to punchng, He said, “We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today (Tuesday).”
Putin confirmed that an F-16 Turkish fighter jet had shot down the Russian plane, a Sukhoi Su-24, with an air-to-air missile.
But he insisted that the Russian jet had been in Syrian airspace at the time, The New York Times reports.
“Russia-Turkey relations will drop below zero,” Ivan Konovalov, director of the Centre for Strategic Trends Studies, said on the state-run Rossiya 24 Cable News channel. The two countries are also significant trade partners.
On Tuesday, television footage shown on the privately-owned Turkish channel Haberturk showed a warplane exploding in the air and tumbling down in flames in a wooded area, identified as the Turkmen Mountains.
A Turkish military officer said two warplanes were seen encroaching the country’s border and had been warned to stop before one of them was crashed.
“The data we have is very clear. There were two planes approaching our border, we warned them as they were getting too close,” he said.
Another senior Turkish official told Reuters, “Our findings show clearly that Turkish air space was violated multiple times. And they violated it knowingly.”
Shadi al-Ouwayni, an activist in rural Latakia Province, where the pilot’s body was recovered, said one pilot was shot as he drifted to the ground in his parachute while the other was captured by a local militia called the 10th Brigade.
