Putin: Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane is 'a stab in our back by associates of terrorism'

Russian President Vladimir Putin harshly rebuked Turkey for its downing of a Russian warplane Tuesday morning.

The move was "a stab in the back ... by accomplices of the terrorists," Putin said Tuesday from the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi before a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah.

"Today's loss is linked to a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists. I cannot qualify what happened today as anything else," Putin said, according to Reuters.

"We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by Islamic State have been arriving on Turkish territory," he said, saying that was how the jihadists had been funding themselves.

"And now we get stabbed in our back and our planes, which are fighting terrorism, are struck. This despite the fact that we signed an agreement with our American partners to warn each other about air-to-air incidents and Turkey ... announced it was allegedly fighting against terrorism as part of the US coalition."

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has defended Turkey's decision to down the plane, saying on Tuesday that it was Turkey's "national duty" to protect the country's security. He added that Turkey had the right "to take all kinds of measures" to protect its border, the Associated Press reported.

But the Russian leader asserted that the plane was attacked when it was roughly a mile from the Turkish border and had come down 2 1/2 miles inside Syria.

"Our pilots didn't threaten Turkey," Putin said. "This is obvious."

Turkey says the plane was in Turkish airspace and had been warned repeatedly before it was shot down by Turkish F-16 jets. Russia has denied this, insisting that the plane was in Syrian airspace when it was shot down by a Turkish surface-to-air missile.

The Turkish military published a radar map demonstrating the reported flight path of the jet that it shot down, which Ankara is using as proof that the pilots violated the country's airspace:

"We have always treated Turkey as not only a close neighbor, but also as a friendly nation," Putin said. "I don't know who has an interest in what happened today, but we certainly don't."

He added: "Today's tragic event will have serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations."

Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider that this bellicose rhetoric coming from Russia was to be expected and would most likely continue.

"Putin will need to save face and will offer a lot of stern language, but his options are limited if he doesn't want to start a war with NATO at this moment," Zilberman said.

"I would be concerned that Russia could take a tit-for-tat approach and down a Turkish fighter jet at some at point in the future, but an incident in 2012 when Syria shot down a Turkish fighter jet shows that perhaps cooler heads will prevail as that incident did not further escalate."

The jet was carrying two people, both of whom reportedly ejected. According to CNNTurk, one of the pilots has been captured by Turkmen forces, rebels in Syria with close ethnic and historical links to Turkey.

According to The Associated Press, the rebel group that captured the surviving pilot says the other was dead upon landing, but unconfirmed reports are emerging that the second pilot was shot dead as he was parachuting out of the plane.

Russian warplanes have been conducting airstrikes over Syria since late September, sometimes causing tension with Turkey when its planes come too close to the Turkish border.

In early October, Turkey complained that at least one Russian warplane had violated Turkish airspace and another Russian jet locked its targeting radar on Turkish planes, The Wall Street Journal reported. It led US Secretary of State John Kerry to warn Russia about the threat of escalation.

And last week, Turkey summoned Russian ambassador Andrey G. Karlov and called for an immediate end to Russia's military operation close to the Turkish border. Turkey accused Russia of bombing villages in northern Syria inhabited by Syrian Turkmens, who are Syrians of Turkish descent.

NATO has called an "extraordinary meeting" after the incident. Turkey is part of NATO, whose member nations are bound by the treaty to defend one another from aggression.

A US official told The Daily Beast that the coalition had received no warning from Turkey before it downed the Russian plane. "They just did it," the official said.

A White House spokesman declined to comment further. The Pentagon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Turkey has reportedly summoned a Russian envoy to Ankara to discuss the incident.