MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone conversation with his Turkish counterpart has not agreed to any proposals to hold a meeting, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.
"Just now, in the course of an interview with Russian and foreign media, Lavrov literally said he was not engaged in a meeting with the Turkish foreign minister at the forthcoming OSCE ministerial meeting," Zakharova told reporters.
According to Zakharova, Moscow paid attention to media reports citing a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson and alleging that there was an agreement to hold a meeting of the both countries’ foreign ministers in the coming days.
"Such statements by the Turkish Foreign Ministry once again point to the lack of basic concepts of ethics and respect, and are indicative in terms of truthfulness of all that we hear from Ankara," Zakharova noted.
On Tuesday, a Russian Su-24 jet crashed in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the plane was downed by an air-to-air missile launched by a Turkish F-16 jet over Syrian territory, falling 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Turkish border. Putin described the Turkish attack as a "stab in the back" carried out by "accomplices of terrorists."
Following the tragedy, Lavrov canceled his visit to the fifth meeting of the Turkish-Russian Joint Strategic Planning Group in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
