Russian serviceman with shouldered rocket launcher 'seen on Bosphorus'

Turkey accused Russia of a provocation
on Sunday after a serviceman on the
deck of a Russian naval ship allegedly
held a rocket launcher on his shoulder
as the vessel passed through Istanbul. Russia steps up hostility against Turkey
with war room briefing
Relations between the two countries
have deteriorated sharply since last
week when Turkey became the first
Nato member in more than half a
century to shoot down a Russian plane ,
which Turkey said had violated its
airspace while flying sorties over Syria.
The pilot was killed, while the navigator survived .

The Turkish NTV news channel
broadcast photographs that it said
showed a serviceman holding a rocket
launcher on the deck of the landing ship
Caesar Kunikov as it passed through the
Bosphorus strait on Saturday.
“For a Russian soldier to display a
rocket launcher or something similar
while passing on a Russian warship is a
provocation,” the foreign minister,
Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, told reporters,
according to the Hürriyet news site. “If
we perceive a threatening situation, we
will give the necessary response.”
The Bosphorus, which bisects Istanbul,
offers the only passage to the world’s
oceans for the Russian Black Sea fleet. A
first world war-era treaty obliges
Turkey to allow all ships to pass during
peacetime. Since the Russian plane went
down, Moscow has introduced economic
sanctions including a ban on Turkish
foods and other products worth as much
as $1bn.