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MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Turkey’s shooting down a Russian military jet was a war crime and that the Kremlin would punish Ankara with additional sanctions, signaling fallout from the incident would be long-lasting and serious.
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.
“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.
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