Mixed response from Russia to downed fighter jet
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- A day after Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet over Syria, Moscow said both of its pilots ejected the stricken aircraft and one of them had survived and made it safely to a Russian base in the war-torn country.
Vladimir Putin's government also made it clear that it was prepared to take aim at any foreign planes that threatened Russian aircraft in the future, and they said they would move advanced weapons into place to back up the threat.
But as CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports, there were also signs that Moscow wanted to avoid further escalating of the tensions between Russia and Turkey -- and by default, NATO.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday morning that Russian leaders "have no intention to go to war with Turkey."
The incident along the Turkish-Syrian border on Tuesday did, however, show just how dangerous the Syrian skies have become, with the Syrian regime, the U.S. and its allies, and now Russia all carrying out airstrikes in support of opposite sides in the grinding five-year war.
A day after the Russian warplane was shot down, Russia said it was deploying the country's most advanced surface-to-air missile system -- the S400 Triumf, or "SA-21 Growler" as it is referred to by NATO countries -- to Syria.
Turkey's Ministry of Defense released a radar map Tuesday showing where the Russian aircraft crossed into Turkish territory, if only very briefly. A senior U.S. official confirmed that radar tracking showed the Russian Su-24 fighter jet fly over the very southern tip of Turkey's Hatay Province, and the U.S. and NATO have chastised Russia for months for antagonizing other nations with aerial trespass and bullying of foreign planes.
In the case of the shootdown on Tuesday, however, CBS News senior national security correspondent David Martin reported that American officials feel Turkey is largely to blame for overreacting to what was a relatively minor violation of national airspace.
Turkey says the Russian plane strayed just over a mile into its airspace, and was there for only 17 seconds when it was fired on by a Turkish F-16. The Russian jet crashed in Syria, but Turkey's president said Wednesday that some pieces of it fell inside his country.
A visibly angry Vladimir Putin spoke on Russian television after the incident and denied the Su-24 ever left Syrian airspace. He lashed out at Turkey, calling its move a "stab in the back" and accusing the Turks of helping ISIS.
Video posted by Syrian rebels appeared to show the body of one the Russian pilots in the hands of Syrian rebel fighters. Russia says the pilot was murdered by the rebels after parachuting to the ground, but the circumstances of his death after ejecting from the stricken plane remain unclear.
Only on Wednesday did Russia confirm the other pilot was safe on its sprawling base near the northwest Syrian city of Latakia.
On Wednesday morning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he didn't want an escalation over the incident, but he added that Turkey had already warned Moscow about violating its airspace after Russian planes did so twice in October.
President Obama spoke by telephone with the Turkish President and both he and NATO called for calm.
"I do think that this points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operations (in Syria) in the sense that they are operating very close to a Turkish border," noted Mr. Obama.
Russia and Turkey remain on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war; Turkey, like its ally the U.S., backs the Syrian rebels and has been is fiercely opposed to any political transition plan for Syria that would allow the nation's long-time dictator Bashar Assad to remain in power.
Russia supports the Syrian regime, and at the end of September began launching airstrikes in the country. Moscow claimed to be targeting ISIS, but the U.S. says it has also hit so-called moderate rebels in order to prop up Assad's beleaguered military.
There were hopes that Russia might be coaxed into cooperating with the U.S. and its allies in the fight against ISIS, but the downing of the Russian fighter jet raised new doubts over the prospect of potential cooperation.
In spite of the angry rhetoric from Putin on Tuesday and the movement of the Russian surface-to-air missiles into Syria, there were lower-key indications from Russian diplomats that Moscow was at least keeping the door open to work with the U.S. and its allies in Syria.
"We are prepared to... plan strikes on Daesh (ISIS) positions together and create a joint staff with France, the U.S., with all the countries who want to be in this coalition," Russia's ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov, said Wednesday in an interview with Europe 1 radio.
"If the Turks want to be in (the joint staff) as well, they are welcome," he added.
In the same interview, Orlov acknowledged that there could have been "some inadvertent penetrations into Turkish airspace," by Russian planes, but he rejected the claim from Turkey (which was backed up by U.S. officials who said American personnel at a command center in Iraq heard the entire radio exchange) that the Russian pilots were warned 10 times to change course before they were shot down.
Orlov said that claim was "completely wrong, completely false" and insisted the Russian plane was hit "without warning."