Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has urged Russia to give up its "baseless accusations" that Ankara is trading oil with IS militants.
"We should sit at the table and discuss what to do instead of making baseless accusations," Davutoglu told reporters at Ankara airport today.
"Russian authorities should know it was not Turkish jets that violated Russian air space...When there is a war taking place on our doorstep and refugees are pouring into Turkey it would not be responsible behaviour to ignore air space incursions," he said.
"It is not possible to conceal air space violations through baseless accusations targeting Turkey like (allegations of) oil purchases from [IS]."
And here's an item from the Caucasus via RFE/RL's news desk:
A court in Russia's North Caucasus has sentenced six men to up to seven years in jail for recruiting fighters for the Islamic State (IS) extremist organization in Syria.
The North Caucasus Regional Military Court in Rostov-on-Don on December 1 found the six men guilty of establishing an extremist group and propagating terrorism. The six were then immediately sentenced by the court to jail terms ranging from five to seven years.
An estimated 2,700 Russian citizens are believed to have traveled to Syria to join IS or some of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated units fighting there.
(TASS, Interfax)
Russia's decision to cancel package tours to Turkey that have already been purchased has resulted in losses of several hundreds of millions of rubles, according to the Association of Russian Tour Operators (ATOR).
The tour cancelations were made in the wake of Turkey's downing of a Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border last week and amid soaring tensions between Moscow and Ankara.
"There are losses -- these are the partial payments for hotels and payments for flights," ATOR Executive Director Maya Lomidze said.
"Some of the flights will bring tourists home and some of them were planned for the New Year celebrations, and they have been paid for."
Tensions between Ankara and Moscow seem to be showing no sign of abating (from RFE/RL's news desk):
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has accused Russia of trying to "cover up" its violation of Turkey's airspace with "unfounded" claims that Ankara is illegally importing oil from Islamic State militants in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Turkey shot down its plane to protect what he described as Turkish profiteering from the oil trade, a charge Turkey denies.
Davutoglu on December 1 also renewed a call for Russia to keep military and diplomatic channels for dialogue open, insisting that Russia's stance was turning the Syria crisis into a "crisis between Russia and Turkey."
Turkey has said its F-16 fired on the Sukhoi Su-24M warplane on November 24 after it entered Turkish airspace and that Turkish pilots had issued 10 warnings.
Russia insists the jet was flying over Syria.
In related comments, U.S. President Barack Obama said he supports Turkey's right to defend itself.
Obama was speaking after a meeting on December 1 with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Paris, where he has been attending the climate summit.
The U.S. president said the "United States supports Turkey's right to defend itself," but stressed that the Islamic State militant group was the enemy that all sides needed to focus on.
(AP, AFP, Reuters)
Russian analyst Yuri Barmin tweets what he argues could be strong evidence to suggest that Russia does have a second air base in Syria.
The rumored location for the second air base is in Sha'yrat in Homs province, near to where Russian howitzers were deployed in mid-November. The reports of a second Russian air base have not been confirmed by Russia, however.
Russia is known to operate out of its Hmeymim air base in Latakia province.
The timings for a debate in the British Parliament tomorrow on whether the UK should extend air strikes against the IS group to Syria are to be announced at 12:30 GMT today.
A vote is expected to be held tomorrow at 22:00 GMT.
Russia has been accused of using white phosphorous -- banned under the Geneva Convention for use in densely populated areas -- in its bombing campaign in Syria.
Video footage posted online by oppositon activists claims to show the illegal substance being dropped on an area of the Syrian city of Idlib last month.
The video has not been independently verified.
The activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently also claims that white phosphorous was being used in air strikes against IS in the Syrian city of Raqqa in late November,
Meanwhile, in Kosovo (from RFE/RL's news desk):
Police in Kosovo say they have arrested an ethnic Albanian suspected of trying to recruit fighters to go to Syria and Iraq and promoting "terrorist" activities on social media.
In a statement issued on December 1, police said officers had searched the man's house in a village in Hani i Elezit, 65 kilometers south of capital Pristina, where they found a pistol, a rifle, and some electronic devices.
The operation, code-named Van Damme, was part of a wider one initiated from the Brescia court in nearby Italy.
A few hundred Kosovo-born volunteers have joined the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. They often appear on their propaganda videos warning of imminent attacks.
(AP)
Russia is not to blame for the fact that military communications channels with Turkey failed during the incident that resulted in the downing of a Russian Su-24 jet near the Syrian border, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"The fact is that we had military channel links between the militaries and they were designed, shall we say, to prevent such tragedies like the one that happened. These channels failed. And it was not because of any fault on the Russian side, that they failed intentionally or unintentionally...
As we can see, the circumstances point to the fact that no one resorted to using the channels that existed at that moment. And right now, as we know, the Russian military has suspended all contacts with their Turkish colleagues," Peskov told reporters at his morning press briefing.
The Washington Post's Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth tweets that Russia has announced the return of Russian students in Turkey.