Putin says murder of ambassador ploy to wreck Syrian peace process

Russia' president Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the killing of Moscow's ambassador to Turkey was a despicable provocation aimed at spoiling Russia-Turkey ties and derailing his country's attempts to find, with Iran and Turkey, a solution for the Syria crisis.

In televised comments, Mr Putin, speaking at a special meeting in the Kremlin, ordered security at Russian embassies around the world to be stepped up and said he wanted to know who had “directed” the gunman’s hand.

He heaped praise on the murdered Russian ambassador, Andrei Karlov, who was shot in the back and killed as he gave a speech at an Ankara art gallery, and made clear that Moscow's response to his assassination would be robust.

"A crime has been committed and it was without doubt a provocation aimed at spoiling the normalisation of Russo-Turkish relations and spoiling the Syrian peace process which is being actively pushed by Russia, Turkey, Iran and others," said a stern-faced Mr Putin.

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“There can only be one response – stepping up the fight against terrorism. The bandits will feel this happening.”

Knew the slain envoy

Mr Putin, who said he personally knew the slain envoy, said he had agreed in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Russian investigators would soon fly to Ankara to help the Turks with the investigation.

"We must know who directed the killer's hand," Mr Putin told foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of his SVR foreign intelligence service, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the domestic FSB security service.

Mr Putin ordered security at Turkish diplomatic facilities in Russia to be stepped up and said he wanted guarantees from Turkey about the safety of Russian diplomatic facilities.

“I also ask you to implement the agreed proposals on strengthening security at Russian diplomatic facilities abroad,” Mr Putin told the meeting.

The foreign and defence ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey are due to discuss the future of Syria in Moscow on Tuesday.

In an odd coincidence, Mr Putin had been planning to attend a Moscow play on Monday night written by Alexander Griboyedov, Russia's ambassador to Iran, who was murdered in 1829.

Fighting terrorism

Mr Putin cancelled when he heard his Turkish envoy had been murdered.

Turkey’s president, Tayyip Erdogan, said he had agreed in a telephone call with Mr Putin that their co-operation and solidarity in fighting terrorism should be even stronger after the killing of the Russian ambassador in Turkey. Mr Erdogan called the killing a clear provocation aimed at damaging relations between Turkey and Russia at a time of normalisation.

Politicians and analysts in Moscow said the assassination of Mr Karlov would not derail the improvement in relations between the two countries since a crisis over the war in Syria a year ago . "There won't be a new chill in the relationship between Moscow and Ankara," Leonid Slutsky, head of the international affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said on Rossiya 24 state television.

The murder "will only bring Russia and Turkey closer together," Elena Suponina, a senior analyst at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, which advises the Kremlin, said by phone.

It shows "we have a common enemy – terrorism – and only by joining forces can we deal with this enemy," she said. Relations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin have only recently been restored after plunging into crisis when Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the border with Syria in November last year. – (Reuters/Bloomberg)