Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed on Thursday that Moscow and Damascus were not behind an air strike in northern Syria that killed four Turkish soldiers.
“Neither Russia nor Syria, its air force, had anything to do with this,” Lavrov told a news conference in the southern Turkish resort of Alanya, alongside his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Turkey earlier blamed the Syrian government for the November 24 strike, which came on the first anniversary of the shooting down of a Russian military warplane by the Turkish air force.
The 2015 incident sparked an unprecedented crisis in relations between Turkey and Russia, who remain on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict.
Meanwhile, Lavrov said coordination between the two sides should be improved in a bid to fight terrorists.
“To concentrate on fighting terrorists we must continue to improve coordination,” the top Russian diplomat said.
“We coordinate with the US-led coalition, of which Turkey is a part, with the goal of avoiding unplanned incidents. So, through these channels, it would make sense to check who was flying and who was not flying.”
On the other hand, Lavrov said that the US has totally failed to separate the soc-called “moderate” opposition from Nusra Front terrorists.
Source: Agencies
