The U.S. Navy reports that the destroyer USS Donald Cook “encountered multiple, aggressive flight maneuvers by Russian aircraft that were performed within close proximity of the ship,” while operating in the international waters of the Baltic Sea.
Russian planes have been bombing ethnic Turkmen in Syria, escalating tensions between Moscow and Ankara.
To support its insistence that Russia’s Su-24 warplane was warned multiple times about its proximity to Turkish airspace before Turkish F-16s shot it down, Ankara has released audio recordings of the warning messages. On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed those recordings as forgeries.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, struck a confrontational note in a Thanksgiving Day interview with CNN, refusing to apologize for his forces shooting down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border this week. In fact, Erdogan said Turkey would take the same actions again, under similar circumstances.
Following the downing of a Russian jet near the Syrian-Turkish border, the Turkish military has released audio recordings of the warnings it claims were sent to the Russian plane.
Tuesday was filled with conflicting news about the fate of the Russian pilots shot down by Turkish forces over Syria. At various points during the day, it was said that both had been killed – possibly riddled with bullets by Syrian rebels as they came down in their parachutes – and that both were alive, and in enemy hands.
As tensions build between Turkey and Russia following the destruction of a Russian warplane by Turkish F-16s Tuesday morning, Russian state outlet RT.com reports that a missile cruiser has been deployed off the Syrian coast, with orders to “destroy any target posing danger.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Turkey’s defense of its airspace Tuesday evening after Ankara fighter jets shot down a Russian SU-24 warplane earlier in the day, with the Turkish leader claiming that the military was unable to identify the jet that was violating the country’s sovereignty.
The Free Syrian Army, a conglomerate of several rebel groups fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria, has uploaded a video to YouTube showcasing its apparent success striking a direct hit on a Russian helicopter that had recently landed.
On Tuesday morning, two Turkish F-16 fighters engaged a Russian Sukhoi-24 warplane and shot it down with an air-to-air missile, somewhere north of the Syrian port city of Latakia.
