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Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters

Putin: Turkey will regret downing jet 'more than once'

Russian president ratcheted up rhetoric against Ankara in an annual speech, saying its leaders lacked wisdom, judgment

President Vladimir Putin said Turkey's shooting down of a Russian warplane last month was a war crime and that the Kremlin would punish Ankara with additional sanctions, signaling that fallout from the incident would be long-lasting and serious.

Minutes after Putin had finished speaking, his energy minister, Alexander Novak, said Russia was halting talks with Ankara on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, a symbolic move designed to emphasize the strength of Kremlin anger.

Putin, who made the comments during his annual state of the nation speech to his country's political elite on Thursday, said Russia would not forget the Nov. 24 incident and that he continued to regard it as a terrible betrayal.

"We are not planning to engage in military saber-rattling (with Turkey)," said Putin, after asking for a moment's silence for the two Russian servicemen killed in the immediate aftermath of the incident, and for Russian victims of terrorism. "But if anyone thinks that having committed this awful war crime, the murder of our people, that they are going to get away with some measures concerning their tomatoes or some limits on construction and other sectors, they are sorely mistaken."

Turkey would have cause to regret its actions "more than once," he said, promising Russia's retaliatory actions would be neither hysterical nor dangerous.

The rhetoric Putin used suggested any hope of an early rapprochement between the two countries was unlikely to materialize, and that a rift is still deepening.

"It appears that Allah decided to punish the ruling clique of Turkey by depriving them of wisdom and judgment," he said.

Repeating a call for a new broad international coalition against terrorism, Putin focused on the need to pool global efforts following the attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt, both of which were claimed by ISIL.

“We must leave all arguments and disagreements behind and make one powerful fist, a single anti-terror front, which would work on the basis of international law under the aegis of the United Nations.”

But in his call, Putin also accused Washington and its allies of turning Iraq, Syria and Libya into a “zone of chaos and anarchy threatening the entire world” by supporting a change of governments in those countries.

And in an overt reference to Turkey, he called on countries to avoid "double standards, contacts with any terrorist organizations, and any attempts to use them for their own ends."

Turkey has strongly rejected Russian allegations it has any links with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). On Wednesday Russia made it personal, saying Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's family was directly profiting from ISIL oil smuggling.

Russia has already banned some Turkish food imports, including selected fruit and vegetables, as part of a wider retaliatory sanctions package.

Nine days after the incident, Moscow and Ankara still have starkly different versions of what happened, and Putin is furious Erdogan has not apologized for the episode, something the Turkish leader has said he will not do.

Turkey insists the Su-24 warplane violated its air space and was warned repeatedly before being shot down. Russia says the plane, which was taking part in the Kremlin's air campaign against rebel groups in Syria, had not strayed from Syrian air space.

Erdogan sought a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a climate change conference in Paris last week, but was snubbed. And the Russian leader has not taken his phone calls.

Al Jazeera and wire services

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