Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 22
By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:
Russia realizes its mistake towards Turkey, Matthew Bryza, former US assistant secretary for South Caucasus and former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Trend Dec. 22.
Relations between Moscow and Ankara deteriorated greatly after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber in Turkey's airspace Nov. 24.
"Russia is saying that the black box on flight that were shot down, can not be read," he said. "I think that's probably because the information on this is not good for Russia. It probably shows that in fact the airplane was inside the Turkish airspace as my guess."
He said that President Putin knows Russia broke and violated international law and NATO airspace.
"I think President Putin would like to get out of this situation, but he can't just say - ok, we were wrong. Moreover, President Putin insults Turkey."
Bryza said that Turkey is no longer on the agenda of Russia and the scandal over the downed Su-24 will be forgotten soon.
Earlier, Russian ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov said Turkey must meet three conditions for normalization of relations with Russia.
"Turkey must apologize to Russia over the incident involving the downed aircraft," he said.
He said that the other two conditions are to find and punish the perpetrators of the incident involving the plane and compensate for the damage to the Russian side.
After the incident, the Turkish foreign ministry said that Turkey will not pay compensation for the downed Russian plane.