Moscow: One of the Russian pilots of a fighter jet shot down by Turkey on the Syrian border told state media on Wednesday that there was no prior warning from the Turks.
"There was no warning, not by radio exchange nor visually. There was no contact at all," Konstantin Murakhtin told Russian journalists at Moscow's base in Syria after being rescued by special forces.
Russia on Wednesday accused Turkey of a "planned provocation" over the downing of warplane on the Syrian border but pledged not to go to war as NATO-member Ankara sought to play down tensions. The jet downing has threatened ties between two major rival players in the Syrian war and raised fears it could escalate into a wider geopolitical conflict.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ratcheted up the pressure after talking to Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu by phone in the first contact between the two sides since the plane went down.
"We have serious doubts about this being an unpremeditated act, it really looks like a planned provocation," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow.
"We do not plan to go to war with Turkey, our attitude toward the Turkish people has not changed," Lavrov added, but warned that Moscow would "seriously reevaluate" relations with Ankara.
President Vladimir Putin yesterday branded the incident a "stab in the back committed by accomplices of terrorists", recommending that Russians do not visit Turkey, a key tourist destination.
Turkey says the Su-24 warplane violated its airspace 10 times within a five-minute period, but Russia insisted it never strayed from Syrian territory.
The shooting also risks derailing efforts to bring peace to Syria that were gaining tentative momentum following the November 13 Paris attacks claimed by Islamic State militants who control swathes of northern Syria.
US President Barack Obama said Washington's NATO ally had a right to defend its airspace but said his priority was to make sure the standoff did not escalate.
