Russia on Downing of Jet by Turkey: ‘We Have Serious Doubts It Was an Accident’

In a press call on Wednesday morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian warplane on Tuesday seemed like a “planned provocation.”

“We have serious doubts it was an accident and prepared footage of the jet downing suggest the opposite,” Lavrov said. “It all looks like a planned provocation.”

“We're not going to wage a war against Turkey … But we will seriously reconsider our agreements with the Turkish government,” he added, according to a translation provided by the state-owned Russian news agency Sputnik International and corroborated by the Associated Press.

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Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Washington, DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider that the bellicose rhetoric coming from Russia was to be expected and will most likely continue — but it is unlikely that it will be followed up by any overt, aggressive retaliation.

“Putin will need to save face and will offer a lot of stern language, but his options are limited if he doesn't want to start a war with NATO at this moment,” Zilberman said on Tuesday.

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