Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has canceled a planned trip to Turkey in the wake of the downing of a Russian warplane by Turkey.
The meeting between Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart had been scheduled for Wednesday.
Lavrov was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying that President Vladimir Putin “directly said that (the downing) cannot but affect Russian-Turkish relations. In this regard, it decided to cancel the meeting, which was planned for tomorrow.”
One of Russia’s largest travel agencies also says it will suspend selling package tours to Turkey as of Wednesday, citing security concerns.
Natali Tours says in a statement its offices in Russia and former Soviet republics would stop sending tourists to Turkey due to “an unstable political situation.”
It also cites Putin’s decree that suspended flights earlier this month to Egypt on security concerns in the aftermath of the October 31 plane crash over the Sinai peninsula.
Nearly 4.5 million Russians visited Turkey last year, 12 percent of all tourists there, second only to Germany.
— AP
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