For Moscow, Turkey’s downing of Russian plane "is a serious incident"
Turkey claims Russian plane violated its airspace. Russia denies it left Syrian airspace. A Kremlin spokesman says he has no idea if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Turkey, tomorrow, will be cancelled. At the same time, it would be wrong to “make any conclusions” from the incident.

Beirut (AsiaNews/Agencies) - President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane in Syria a "very serious incident", but "It would be wrong now to give any assessments, assumptions or make any conclusions before we get a full picture”.

The Kremlin spokesman also said he had no idea if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Turkey, tomorrow, will be cancelled.

For Ankara, the downed Russian aircraft, a Sukhoi-24 tactical bomber, was shot down after it entered Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings that it was violating it.

Russia’s Defence Ministry denied that the plane left Syrian airspace and that it can prove it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that President Vladimir Putin would speak on the crash at talks later Tuesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

"We can assume that the president will address this issue in his conversation with the king in any case, that there will be a reaction from the president," he added.

Without going into details, a NATO official said that the organisation is in contact with Turkey, a NATO member.

The pilots are believed to have ejected. Some sources claim they landed in a mountainous area controlled by Turkmen forces; others believe that one is dead and the other captured by anti-Assad rebels.