Putin: Turkey shot down our fighter plane to ‘lick America in a certain place’

Vladimir Putin unleashed a furious tirade against Turkey on Thursday, suggesting it shot down a Russian warplane last month to curry favour with the U.S. The Russian president dedicated a chunk of his annual news conference to spelling out why he saw no prospect of a rapprochement with Ankara. He said: "If someone in the Turkish leadership decided to lick the Americans in a particular place I don’t know whether they acted correctly or not and I don’t know … whether the Americans needed that.“ Mr Putin added he could imagine a scenario where there was a deal for Turkey to shoot down a Russian plane in return for Washington turning a blind eye to Turkish troops entering Iraq. "Perhaps there was such an arrangement,” he mused.

(There’s a) creeping Islamisation of Turkey that would have Ataturk rolling in his grave

Vladimir Putin

Mr Putin covered a wide range of subjects during his three-hour session with almost 1,400 reporters in a cavernous hall inside a Moscow conference centre. But he reserved his greatest ire for Turkey, which is facing economic sanctions after bringing down a Russian SU-24 fighter bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border on November 24. Mr Putin added: “Maybe, they thought we would run away from there (Syria)? But Russia is not such a country.” After the conference, he also heaped praise on U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump, saying: “He is a very outstanding man, unquestionably talented.”

It’s not up to us to judge his virtue, that is up to US voters, but he is the absolute leader of the presidential race

Putin on Trump

putin Politics