The United States has extended its sanctions list and it includes a Syrian national who is said to be an IS middleman (from RFE/RL's news desk):
The United States has added four individuals and six entities to sanctions list for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including a Russian bank and a former official.
The U.S. Treasury Department said on November 25 that the sanctions target the Russian Financial Alliance Bank for its role in financial transactions with the Syrian government.
It also sanctioned two individuals linked to the bank -- Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is currently the chairman of the World Chess Federation and the former President of the Russian region of Kalmykia, and Mudalal Khuri, one of the bank's leaders.
The sanctions also target a Syrian businessman, George Haswani, who the department said "serves as a middleman for oil purchases by the Syrian regime" from Islamic State militant group.
Others targeted by the fresh round of sanctions included other entities owned or controlled by Khuri, the department said.
(Reuters, Interfax)
Russians React To Downing Of Jet
Some Moscow residents voiced anger the day after Turkey shot down a Russian military jet, while others urged calm and caution. (RFE/RL's Current Time TV)
Russia’s NATO Ambassador Alexander Grushko has accused NATO of providing "political cover" for Turkey because the alliance "fears the consequences for itself" if the incident over Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 jet in Syria "was not resolved, since Turkey is a member of NATO and NATO is linked to Turkey by a range of obligations."
Grushko added, referring to yesterday's extraordinary NATO meeting that had been called by Turkey:
"There is a certain confusion in NATO. Yesterday, we saw such 'political theater.' The meaning of which is, based on Atlantic solidarity and the interests of political solidarity, to politically "cover" for Ankara."
Grushko said that Turkey had commited a serious illegal act, that of "downing a plane in the air space of another country."
"Even, as it turns out today, even if our plane did accidentally violate Turkish air space, then that was a very short violation and it moved from Syria to Syria. Yesterday all this was glossed over."
The home of a Russian pilot who was mistakenly named by some individuals on social media as one of the two crew of the downed Su-24 plane, and who was mistakenly reported as having been killed, is being guarded by police according to the pro-Kremlin news site Life News.
Sergei Rumyantsev was mistakenly named as being the navigator of the downed Su-24. Turkoman gunmen in Syria's Latakia province claimed initially that they had shot dead both crewmen, but the navigator was rescued alive in the early hours of this morning and later named as Konstantin Murakhtin.
Rumyantsev, who hails from Chelyabinsk, "phoned his family and said everything was OK with him," Life News claimed.
Analyst Michael Horowitz explains one reason why the Syrian border town of Azaz -- the target of Russian air strikes today -- is strategically important for the Syrian armed opposition, which holds it.
The Institute for the Study of War have published a handy interactive timeline of Russia-Turkey tensions over Syria.
In a possible message to Turkey, Russia has carried out air strikes today in Azaz, a strategic town on the Syria-Turkey border in the north of Syria's Aleppo province.
Claimed footage of the strikes were posted to YouTube by activists from the northern Aleppo town of Haritan.
Reuters has just reported that footage filmed at the Turkey-Syria border shows aid trucks burning after an apparent air strike.
This is the footage of the burning trucks that has been shared on YouTube by Syrian activists, who claim that the trucks contained merchandize and agricultural crops.
The strikes in Azaz come after Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev accused Turkey earlier today of purchasing oil directly from IS militants in Syria, in comments made in the wake of yesterday's downing by Turkey of a Russian Su-24 jet.
TASS has more from the rescued navigator of the downed Su-24 jet who has now been named as Konstantin Murakhtin.
Murakhtin said that Turkey gave no warning to the Su-24 before shooting it down.
He also insisted that the plane had never entered Turkish air space.
"No, that's impossible, not even for a second, especially since were were flying at an altitude of 6,000 meters, the weather was clear, as we say in our slang, a million on a million. Our entire flight until the moment the rocket hit was fully under my control. I could see very well both on the map and on the ground, where the border was and where we were.
We carried out military flights there several times, we know it like the back of our hand. We carried out military missions and returned on the return route to the air base. As a navigator I know every hill. I can orientate myself even without instrumentation."
The New York Times has some interesting insights from Turkey analysts over the reasons behind Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian jet.
These include his frustration with Russia over a range of issues even beyond Syria, the Gordian knot of figuring out what to do with Syria itself and Turkey’s strong ethnic ties to the Turkmen villages Russia has been bombing lately in the area of the crash.
"I think Turkey was alarmed that Russia’s bombing of positions held by Turkey-backed rebels in northern Syria was hurting their positions and therefore Turkey’s future stakes in Syria," said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.