MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Tuesday, the Russian Federal Security Service head Alexander Bortnikov said that the detonation of a homemade explosive device with an equivalent of 1 kilogram of TNT caused the crash that killed 224 people over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31.
"No change there. The offensive of the Syrian army continues, the effective fight against the Islamic State only by Air Forces is not feasible so the main direction is a ground operation. In this case, the only force performing ground operation is the army of the Syrian Arab Republic," Peskov told reporters.
At a meeting announcing the conclusions of the A321 crash probe, Putin stressed that the ongoing Russian military operation against terrorists in Syria, launched on September 30 following a request from President Bashar Assad, should be intensified so that the perpetrators understood that revenge was unavoidable.