The SU-24 supersonic bomber (NATO reporting name: Fencer), the kind that was shot down by a Turkish F16, is capable of traveling at about MACH 1.3. That’s almost one and a half times the speed of sound. That’s 1,654 KMH, and a bit less at sea level.

It’s unlikely to have been at maximum speed when it was shot down, so let’s assume it was at normal cruise speed, normally 75 percent of full power, which gives you about 1,200 kmh, give or take. So let’s be generous and say that it was traveling at about 1000 kmh, or just over 600 mph.

The Turkish authorities contend that in the five minutes before the attack, ten warnings were issued. According to all the maps, at its widest point, that little peninsular of Turkish land pushing into Syrian territory is about 5.39 km or 3.5 miles. Though if the incursion took place at all it is likely to have been further towards the tip.

At normal cruise speed (generously rounded down to 1000km) the alleged incursion would have lasted 19.4 seconds, barely enough time for a fast moving jet to take aim and lock on. Now let’s look at the 5 minutes of warnings that the Turks allege they gave the downed aircraft. Again, if we assume the same speed, the plane travelled 83 kilometers after the first warning and before the Turkish warplane fired.

Given the size of the little outcrop of Turkey into Syria and the apparent track of the aircraft, as confirmed by Turkish radar information, at the time the warning there could have been no indication that the SU24 would go near Turkish airspace. At that time it was travelling almost due east, again according to Turkish radar data. The testimony of the surviving crew member must also be taken into account. He is adamant that no warnings were received. It is possible of course that something was said on an obscure aviation frequency, but not the emergency frequency that all combat aircraft monitor as a matter of routine.

We are therefore asked to believe that an aircraft, in a known conflict zone, which was not at that time approaching Turkey’s border, was given a warning not to. Why would you tell an aircraft that isn’t heading towards your border not to cross it? By the time the Russian aircraft had turned onto a course that was certainly going to cross into Turkish airspace, there would have been less than a minute of time available to tell it not to. That minute (approximately) is critical!

As a NATO member, patrolling aircraft are not generally authorized to open fire at will. Instead, they report to base and await instructions. After having confirmed sighting, the SU24, the Turkish pilot would then have had to report to his controller on the ground. Someone at a Turkish Military base then had to make a decision and issue the order to engage and destroy. The pilot then has to lock the target into his weapons system and push the button to launch his air to air missiles. Thus, all of that had to have happened before the Russian actually penetrated Turkish air space.

...

The alarming point is that even if there was an air space incursion - and let’s accept the possibility that there was - it was very brief and could not have been confirmed as probable any more than a minute or so at most before it happened. The decision to shoot it down therefore was taken an appreciable amount of time before the incursion. That being the case and given the distances and speeds involved, it would have happened anyway.

This brings the sequence of events into question. Normally and properly, a defending air force will first identify a potential threat at which point weapons may be armed. The threat must then be confirmed and seen to be a sustained threat to the defending country. That information is radioed back to tactical command who issue orders either to engage or to continue monitoring the situation. Given the speed and distances involved, the Turkish claims of repeated warnings just don’t stack up.

On Saturday, President Gul said the Turkish government could not ignore the fact that Syria had shot down a Turkish aircraft.

"It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary will be done," he was quoted as saying by state news agency, Anatolia.

"It is routine for jet fighters to sometimes fly in and out over [national] borders... when you consider their speed over the sea," he added.

"These are not ill-intentioned things but happen beyond control due to the jets' speed."

"Erdogan claims that a Russian aircraft entered Turkey's airspace for a few seconds, forgetting that its own planes violate Iraqi and Syrian airspace every day," al-Maliki said, as quoted by AFP.

The incident has also provoked a wave of indignation in Greece, which claimed that Turkish warplanes violated Greek airspace almost on a regular basis with 2,244 breaches in 2014 alone.

...

President Putin nailed it; it was "a shot in the back". Because all evidence is pointing towards an ambush: the F-16s might have been actually waiting for the Su-24s. With Turkish TV cameras available for maximum global impact.

The Su-24s were actually after Chechens and Uzbeks — plus a few Uyghurs — smuggled in with fake Turkish passports (Chinese intel is also on it), all of these operating in tandem with a nasty bunch of Turkish Islamo-fascists. Most of these goons transit back and forth between the CIA-weaponized Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusra. These were the goons who machine-gunned the Russian pilots as they parachuted down after the hit on the Su-24.

Facing Consequences: Russia to Respond in Kind to Downing of Su-24 Bomber
The Su-24s posed absolutely no threat to Turkey. Turkish UN Ambassador Halit Cevik's letter to the Security Council is a joke; two Russian jets "warned 10 times in five minutes" to change direction, both flying "more than a mile" into Turkey for an interminable 17 seconds. The whole thing has already been amply debunked. Not to mention that Turkish — and NATO — planes "violate" the Syrian border all the time.

Erdogan well knows how US neocons were livid with French President Francois Hollande after his "it's war" cry was followed by a drive to work together with Russia against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

So the real target was not a Su-24, but the evolving possibility, after the Paris attacks, of a real coalition — the US, Britain and France on one side, the "4+1" (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah) on the other side — finally converging their interests into a unified fight against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

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"Disregarding these warnings, both planes, at an altitude of 19,000 feet, violated Turkish national airspace to a depth of 1.36 miles and 1.15 miles in length for 17 seconds from 9.24.05 local time."

But many social media users have begun crunching those numbers and found that they don’t quite add up.

    — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 24, 2015

When calculating the distance flown and the amount of time allegedly spent in Turkish airspace, some have attempted to determine the aircraft’s flight speed. According to those numbers, the Su-24 would have had to be flying at stall speed.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense also released video proving that the incident did not happen the way the Turkish government claims. Flight path data of the Su-24 shows that it never entered Turkish airspace, and was attacked while flying over Syria.

zeroboris

You can shoot down any jet from an ambush even F-22 whatever. When our bombers were covered by SU-30 fighters turks were whining about getting locked and dared not attack. But then we made a mistake: agreement with the US about flight safety and stopped covering our bombers. This mistake has costed us 1 SU-24 bomber, 1 MI-8 evacuation helicopter and 2 lives (a pilot and a mariner).

Information has come from  Syrian sources that last night (24.11) the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces struck with massive attacks on the positions of militants (including Turkomans) in the region where the Russian Su-24 was brought down.

The source reported that most likely nothing remains of the militants who shot down the Russian MI-8 .

No detailed information has arrived yet.

Meanwhile, there has appeared information that the Turks are not putting their fighters in the air after the majority of them were lit up by Russian radar (the S-300 and, according to early reports, possibly the S-400). After the statement of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, Turkey is afraid that their planes can be destroyed when approaching the border.

In this regard the Syrians reported that the Russia air-space forces can begin the full-scale destruction of camps in the border territory, and also annihilate the retreating militants and the fuel trucks which are moving towards Turkey.

Erdogan did not receive the hoped-for support from NATO. Erdogan has acknowledged that if the Russian plane even violated the border of Turkey, this was for only for 17 seconds, which means that the Turkish Air Force, on purely physical grounds, could not have reacted to it if the provocation was not prepared in advance. This figure of 17 seconds appears in NATO reports.

Members of NATO have been ambiguously treating Erdogan’s action. At present it is difficult to judge how the situation will develop. While it is obvious that Erdogan is attempting to back off, it is already too late, as Vladimir Putin gave to understand at a meeting with the king of Jordan.

Most likely Turkey did not expect such a severe reaction from Russia.

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The group of Syrian rebels fired on two Russian pilots as they parachuted in Syrian territory.

One pilot was saved by the Syrian army, while the other, as proved by Moscow, was injured during the landing, after which he was killed by Jihadists.

The pilots flew in a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Syrian-Turkish border, when they were shot down by a Turkish fighter, because they allegedly violated Turkish airspace.

In the video that the rebels recorded themselves, you can see a couple of fighters opening fire on the Russian pilots who were at that moment parachuting down to earth.

Article 42 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, adopted in 1977, prohibited the attack on the people that descend by parachute after jumping from a disabled aircraft.

The same Article provides that the person who came down to earth, the territory controlled by the enemy, must be given an opportunity to surrender before becoming the target of attack, unless they take hostile action.
...

Erdogan has a raging hard-on for the multiple gas pipelines from Libya, Egypt, Israel, and Qatar that will provide tens of billions of dollars in revenues in transit fees. Of course Turkey will do whatever it takes to ensure that Assad falls as it is literally costing Turkey billions of dollars every month that Assad is in power. None of what I have read about Turkey supporting ISIS surprises me in the slightest knowing what Turkey is losing.

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Russia claims otherwise:

    HMEIMIM AIRBASE'S RADAR SYSTEM RECORDS VIOLATION OF SYRIAN AIRSPACE BY ATTACKING TURKISH WARPLANE - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY

And is escalating:

    RUSSIAN 'MOSKVA" CRUISER TO GO TO AREA IN COASTAL LATAKIA TO STRENGTHEN AIR DEFENSE IN SYRIA - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY
    RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES GENERAL STAFF: NONE OF OUR PARTNERS, COUNTRIES FIGHTING ISIL HAVE EVER TOLD US THAT SO-CALLED MODERATE OPPOSITION UNITS WERE IN AREA WHERE SU-24 DOWNED
    NO ATTEMPTS REGISTERED ON PART OF TURKISH PLANE TO GET IN TOUCH OR ESTABLISH VISUAL CONTACT WITH OUR CREW VIA OBJECTVE CONTROL DEVICES - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINSTRY
    WARSHIP TO DESTROY ANY THREATS SEEN TO RUSSIAN PLANES: IFX

Specifically, as RT reports, the steps announced by Russian top brass as the following:Three steps as announced by top brass:

    Each and every strike groups’ operation is to be carried out under the guise of fighter jets
    Air defense to be boosted with the deployment of Moskva guided missile cruiser off Latakia coast with an aim to destroy any target that may pose danger
    Military contacts with Turkey to be suspended

Just like the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, it has quickly become a case of "he said, she said":

Rudskoy said the Russian warplane did not violate Turkish airspace. Additionally, according to the Hmeymim airfield radar, it was the Turkish fighter jet that actually entered Syrian airspace as it attacked the Russian bomber. The Turkish fighter jet made no attempts to contact Russian pilots before attacking the bomber, Rudskoy added.

“We assume the strike was carried out with a close range missile with an infra-red seeker,” Rudskoy said. “The Turkish jet made no attempts to communicate or establish visual contact with our crew that our equipment would have registered. The Su-24 was hit by a missile over Syria’s territory."

Sergey Rudskoy, a top official with the Russian General Staff, condemned the attack on the Russian bomber in Syrian airspace by a Turkish fighter jet as “a severe violation of international law”. He stressed that the Su-24 was downed over the Syrian territory. The crash site was four kilometers away from the Turkish border, he said

...

Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva, equipped with the ‘Fort’ air defense system, similar to the S-300, will be deployed off Latakia province's coast.

"We warn that every target posing a potential threat will be destroyed,” lieutenant general Sergey Rudskoy said during the briefing.

“All military contacts with Turkey will be suspended,” he added.

Furthermore, as the Russian Ministry of Defense explained, going forward, any Turkish plane that enters Syrian airspace will be fair game.

The measured distance of the Su-24's alleged incursion into Turkish airspace is 2.39 miles from entrance to exit.  

http://www.freemaptools.com/measure-distance.htm

At a crusing speed of 300mph, the Su-24 would only be in Turkish territory for about 28 seconds.

There is no way the Turkish F-16 could have fired, and struck, the Su-24 while it was still in Turkish territory.  Either the pilot fired before the Su-24 entered Turkish airspace, or else the F-16 struck the Russian plane after it had left Turkey.

Something clearly does not add up.

The "Right of hot pursuit" is a murky concept at best, and applies to the most egregious crimes in the international space, Jack. It has never been accepted for something as trivial as a clearly non-aggressive violation of airspace (17 seconds worth or otherwise). There are no specific rules of engagement for violating another country's airspace that anyone agrees on. The generally accepted and almost universal practice is to escort (force) an aircraft out of your airspace after warning it and then bitch about the violation diplomatically and in the press. Nobody is so cowardly as to ambush a transiting aircraft without warning except Israel - and now, Turkey. There is no such thing as an international law that describes precisely when one country is 'allowed' to shoot down another aircraft in it's airspace, just the nebulous suggestion that a country has the right to defend its airspace. Using an excuse of 'hot pursuit' to punish an airspace violation would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

In extreme cases, you would only dare shoot at an aircraft ignoring you if it remains in your airspace and only while it is in your airspace and some kind of credible threat. By Turkey's own admission, they only believed the Russian aircraft to be transiting their airspace for all of 17 seconds at 19,000 ft. while performing a combat mission clearly focused on Syrian territory. In order to intercept the Russian jet at the right moment to get off an air-to-air missile in that 17-second window, they had to have planned to intercept and fire on it well beforehand. This has absolutely nothing to do with protecting Turkish airspace, but rather protecting the Turkmen al Nusra head-choppers operating in Syrian territory that the Russian jets were bombing. It was no accident - Erdogan had the attack planned from the start. Russia and everyone in NATO knows that, they just can't say so.

Erdogan just royally screwed himself.

1) Putin repositioning the Moskva and threatening to protect Russian aircraft from any potential threats means Turkey will lose anything they try to bring within 20 miles of a Russian jet. NATO has pretty much left Turkey twising in the wind on this one - they said Turkey and Russia had to work it out on their own. Meaning when Russia takes out a Turkish F-16 ten miles inside Turkish airspace because it was a potential threat to a Russian aircraft, NATO won't lift a finger. They've already said as much before they sent Turkey packing this morning.

2) The al Nusra Turkmen and their Chechen jihadi pals in the mountains are probably in for a little carpet bombing and cruise missile showers. The Turkmen civilians are already panicing and fleeing Syria for Turkey, so there's even less reason for Russia to hold back. That place is going to get leveled and the Turkmen will never be allowed back. It sucks to poke the bear in your own backyard - you will be relocating as a result, not the bear. The SAA will own those mountains (or what's left of them) again in a few weeks.

Never gonna happen nobody wants war cockroaches will win

UN General Assembly's Third Committee passed a Russia-proposed resolution condemning attempts to glorify Nazism ideology and denial of German Nazi war crimes. The US, Canada and Ukraine were the only countries to vote against it.

The resolution was passed on Friday by the committee, which is tasked with tackling social and humanitarian issues and human rights abuses, by 115 votes against three, with 55 nations abstaining, Tass news agency reported.

The document voiced concern over the rise of racism-driven crimes around the world and the influence that parties with extremist agendas are gaining.

It called for a universal adoption of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Many nations including the US, the UK, China and India, signed the convention but did not recognize a mechanism resolving individual complaints it establishes, which makes the convention unenforceable in their jurisdictions.

The resolution also decried attempts to whitewash Nazi collaborators by depicting them as fighters of nationalist resistance movements and honoring them as such.

It condemned any form of denial of Nazi war crimes, including the Jewish Holocaust.

Russia, which submitted the draft resolution, said it regretted that it could not be adopted unanimously.

"The fact that the US, Canada and Ukraine voted against, while delegations from EU member states abstained in the vote on this draft resolution, which was supported by an overwhelming majority of the UN member states, is extremely regrettable," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Ukraine's position is particularly dispiriting and alarming. One can hardly understand how a country, the people of which suffered their full share of the horrors of Nazism and contributed significantly to our common victory against it, can vote against a resolution condemning its glorification," the ministry said.

...

That's the clincher, isn't it? Russian fighter jet was shot down over Syrain territory, so it was Turkish airforce that violated Syrian airspace.

It it was shot down over Turkey, the pilots would have ejected over Turkey, would be taken by Turkish border guard and would have been sitting safely in Turkish prison at worst. Not being dead by the hand of the US/Turkey friends - the ISIS.

Besides, Russian operations in Syrian airspace were no secret, Russia has (had?) an information sharing initiative with NATO.

And you know, when American fighters or recon panes violate Russian airspace, they are usually headed off not shot down...

This shooting-down was a premeditated act of provocation on Turkish/US part, who don't want ISIS destroyed. They've just achieved the opposite effect, though.

Oh, and anyone, who expects Putin to react in a hard or violent manner, has not been paying attention to Russian politics in the last 15 years, especially to Russia's reaction to the American invasion of Ukraine. The reaction will come, but it will be slow, balanced, and well-thought-out.

Moscow will measure its response to limit the harm done to Turkish and Russian businessmen, who had nothing to do with the incident, and would decide on a proper action, Lavrov said.

“We cannot fail to react to what happened. Not because we must retaliate. It’s just that there are too many issues in Turkey that pose a direct terrorist threat to our citizens. And not only ours,” he said.

Lavrov said after canceling his planned visit to Istanbul that Moscow doesn’t indent to send any senior officials to Turkey or receive any senior Turkish officials. At the same time, phone channels remain open, as evidenced by the call with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

The Russian minister said there was a question of American involvement in the downing of the Russian plane. According to his sources, the US demands all members of the anti-IS coalition led by Washington, who use US-made military aircraft, coordinate all deployments with the US military.

“I wonder if this demand of the Americans covers… Turkey. If it does, I wonder whether Turkey asked permission from the US to fly its US-made planes and take down – let’s say 'an unidentified' – plane over Syrian territory,” Lavrov said.

“President Hollande suggested measures to close the Turkish-Syrian border to stop the flow of militants and finances to terrorists. It’s remarkable that President Obama didn’t react to it. I believe it’s a good suggestion and that during the visit tomorrow President Hollande will tell us details. We are prepared to consider these measures in earnest. Many people say that sealing the border would effectively eliminate the terrorist threat in Syria,” Lavrov said.

Earlier in the day, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu slammed Russia for "attacks on Turkmen" in Syria, which according to Ankara preceded the incident with the downed Su-24.

The Russian FM said the region where the incident happened is not just home to Turkmen people. There are also hundreds of foreign fighters affiliated with known terrorist groups and elements of their infrastructure such as weapons depots and command points there, he said.

“I asked [Turkish FM Çavuşoğlu] whether Turkey’s close attention to this region, including the calls to create a buffer zone there, was motivated by a desire to protect this infrastructure from destruction. I didn’t receive any reply to this question,” Lavrov said.

He added the downing of the Russian warplane occurred shortly after a series of airstrikes on terrorist oil convoys and facilities by the Russian Air Force. The incident “sheds new light” on the issue, according to the Russian foreign minister.

He added that even if Turkey’s words were taken on face value, its actions contradict its own position expressed in 2012, after Syria took down a Turkish military plane. At the time, then-Prime Minister Erdogan told the Turkish parliament that a short incursion into another nation’s airspace cannot justify an attack on it.

ISIS terrorist stops a car with a Christian pair.

ISIS: "Are you a Muslim?"
Christian: "Yes, I'm a Muslim."
ISIS: "If you are a Muslim, then recite a sura from Quaran."
The Christian recites a verse from the Bible.
ISIS: "Very well, you may pass."

After a few minutes, the wife, barely alive from fright, tells her husband: "I can't believe you took such a risk. Why did you say you are a Muslim? If he understood that you were lying, he would have killed us both!"

To which the husband replies: "You fret needlessly. If they knew Quaran, they would have never been killing people."

That's not true at all. Where did you read this? There isn't any ISIS militants there, except the fact that Russia is bombing Türkmen's.

It's not about Russia, Turkey have right to shoot any flying machine inside their borders. If it was another countries plane they still shoot it anyway. They didn't even know it was a Russian plane when they shot it.

Source, please  

MAP: Russian Su-24 crash scheme by Russian defense ministry:

Russian Defense Ministry demonstrates map of the Su-24M flight which ended in downing by Turkish F-16 jet. Russian MoD insists the jet didn’t violate Turkish airspace, while Ankara says the plane crossed into its territory for 17 seconds, leaked document indicates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cs8jdJKSGo

During the moment of Turkey shooting down the Russian Su-24, it flew at the 6km altitude, one kilometer away from Turkish border on the Syrian side. The plane was shot down by AMERICAN missiles from American-made F-16 employed by TURKISH army, in retaliation for Russia successfully bombing Syrian terrorists, whom they call ‘Turkmen,’ and who are financed, trained and openly supported by Turkey.

In the area in which the plane was shot down there is no peaceful population. It is the territory fully controlled by various armed thugs, fed by Turkey to create havoc on Syrian territory.

It has been known that Turkey actively recruits terrorists in the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as in the Russian Chechnya and Dagestan, through a wide network of mosques and extremist Islamist schools they openly organize and finance. The exception are Chechnya and Dagestan on the Russian side, where recruitment is done more subtly.

As was seen on many videos, the plane crashed very quickly. Both pilots ejected. It was also visible on videos how Turkey-supported terrorists were shelling the pilots as they tried to land.

The info about the pilots is conflicting. There was a speculation that they may have been taken hostage. However, the latest sad news I’ve heard is that either one or both pilots are unfortunately dead. One of them may still be alive, being a hostage in the hands of the militants.

...

Below I will talk about USA and its unseemly role in the downing of the Russian Su-24 jet in Syria. You know I usually don’t talk about Obama, but this is one exception. Obama’s despicable role in this matter deserves a special mention.

...

It has to be mentioned that Kurds play a very significant and convoluted role in Turkey. On one hand, they have legitimate grievances and it is their right to want independence and being re-united with other Kurds from three other Middle Eastern countries. To remind, Kurds were artificially divided between four countries, with borders drawn by the British Empire during colonial era. Same happened to Armenians, who also became divided between several countries by the British Empire. Read all about it in SYRIA GAME CHANGER.

On another hand, it is known that in many situations Kurds are financed and controlled by the US. Exploiting their natural grievances, desire for equal rights and re-unification, USA systematically uses Kurds as a very clandestine and non-obvious weapon for US geopolitical gains in the Middle East. Therefore, Kurdish protests and riots in Turkey, manipulated since 2014 to get Erdogan back into the US/NATO fold, were helped from across the ocean.

In view of the Russian jet’s downing and the killing of the two Russia pilots, I can predict that Erdogan will be in a more precarious situation than ever.

Big changes in Russia’s attitude towards Turkey are coming.

Russian Duma has been discussing since the Egypt crash certain security measures regarding Turkey. It has been proposed to stop air traffic to Turkey, in addition to Egypt. It was also proposed to revoke visa-free regime. This proposal didn’t pass the Duma, as most rejected such restrictions at the time. It’s almost inevitable that it will be passed now.

Egypt tourism indistry is already dead after Russians withdrew all tourism. Russian tourists constituted 70%, in some case up to 90%, of Egypt’s tourism revenues. Turkey’s tourism industry is about to suffer the same fate. For both of these countries tourism is extremeley important.

Meanwhile, Russian resorts in Sochi and Crimea are getting a boost. In this regard, note the ‘co-incidence’ of Ukraine’s terrorist act, as discussed in: Urgent! Ukraine Blows Up Power Lines, Leaving Crimea and 2.5 Million People Without Electricity. This terrorist act left the peninsula without power, sabotaging the growing Crimean tourism. Russia is also developing winter tourism in Siberia and the Far East.

...

As I said, Russia tried at all cost to keep Turkey stable, overlooking some of Erdogan’s actions. Destabilization of Turkey is beneficial only to the US – this is why by default Russia had to do the opposite.

Now the situation may change. But I will predict preliminarily that Putin will still act very carefully, so not to destabilize the region further. The political outlook for Turkey will change gradually; when Putin is ready to act – no one will see it coming.

This is still the situation when Russia will have to chose between bad and very bad so not to destabilize the region even more.

...

And now let’s see what Obama has said immediately after the shooting down by Turkey of the Russian Su-24 jet: ‘Turkey has the right to defend itself.’ Meanwhile the US command in Iraq says they can confirm that for 5 minutes Turkish army was warning the Russian jet to withdraw from the area, and only then they fired.

Let me get it straight: Turkish army was warning Russian jet to withdraw from the area across the border, in SYRIA, where Turkey has no right to be present or give commands, and where Russian pilots are present at the direct request and invitation of the Syrian government.

It is clear that this is an openly cynical and blatant collusion between USA and Turkey. I would not be surprised if it turns out that the ones pushing the trigger that killed Russian pilots and downed Su-24 were actually Americans, under the guise of the Turkish army. Let’s recall that USA and NATO have a lot of military bases in Turkey and this territory has always been their prised stronghold against Russia.

...

The downing of a Russian warplane in Syria by Turkey appears to be a pre-planned provocation, the Russian Foreign Minister said. Ankara failed to communicate with Russia over the incident, he added.

“We have serious doubts that this act was unintentional. It looks very much like a preplanned provocation,” Lavrov said, citing Turkey’s failure to maintain proper communication with Russia, the abundance of footage of the incident and other evidence.

Lavrov added that many Russian partners called the incident “an obvious ambush.”