"We are cooperating with partners and potential partners, regardless of who likes it and who doesn't like it. It’s business. It’s just business ties. This is a system that the Turkish government wants, and we want to give it. And so far it’s going very smoothly," Kladov told the outlet, when asked how often Washington came between Russia's state-owned defence industry corporation Rostec and its potential customers just like it was happening with the S-400 sales to Turkey, which were opposed by the United States.
In response to the statement, US Defence Department spokesman Charlie Summers said on Friday that Turkey’s relations with the United States, its NATO ally, would face "grave consequences" in terms of military cooperation and the deliveries of the Patriot air defence systems and F-35 jets.
Also on Friday, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said that the Turkish authorities were working to solve the problem with the supply of F-35 fighters, which Washington linked with the acquisition by Ankara of Russian anti-aircraft missile systems S-400.
The S-400 Triumph is Russia's next-generation mobile surface-to-air missile system and can carry three different types of missiles capable of destroying aerial targets at a short-to-extremely-long range. The weapon is designed to track and destroy various types of areal targets, from reconnaissance aircraft to ballistic missiles.
The Russian-Turkish cooperation on S-400 deliveries has been criticized by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States, which have cited security concerns and inability of integration between S-400 and NATO's air defence systems. Ankara, in its turn, has said that purchase of military equipment is its sovereign affair.
