On November 25, about 1000 Russian alleged “protesters” pelted the Turkish Embassy in Moscow with eggs, cans with paint and rocks. The “protesters”, mostly young, athletic and obviously officially organized men smashed all embassy windows as police was watching without any reaction. Similar actions took place in most of Russian cities with Turkish consulates.
The cause of the “protest” was the shooting down of a Russian jet on the Turkey-Syria border.
Russians at anti-Turkey protest
Russian military operations in Syria on the border of Turkey were substantially increased.
Semion Bagdasarov, Director of the Russian Center for the Study of the Middle East and Central Asia, stated “Our reaction to this incident should be rigid, even cruel. If it is not, such incidents, no doubt, will continue. Stop hesitating. In a war, one should always act rigid and decisively.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, one of the most popular and outspoken politicians of Russia, leader of the Liberal Democratic party, in a live interview to radio station “Moscow speaking” proposed to “definitely” destroy Turkey with a nuclear missile attack. He said: “It is very easy to destroy Istanbul: just throw one nuclear bomb in the Bosphorus strait and the city will be washed away. It would be such a terrible flood, the water column will rises to 10-15 meters, and the city will sink along with 9 million lives.”
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Russians often say that Zhirinovsky is a clown. But they usually add, that he just openly tells, what most of Russians think, but not express it in public.
Here is a quote from an email, which I received yesterday from a Russian friend:
“One of my acquaintances – ethnic Georgian woman, who lives in Moscow, said to me: ‘The President is great!! He is bombing Syria and now everybody loves him!’ I replied modestly: ‘But did not these bombings injure civilians?’ And she told me: ‘No! Do you know how good our bombs are? When we bombed in Georgia, not a single civilian was hurt!’ ”
The news agency SMART (Syrian Media Action Revolution Team) is virtually the only source of information from Syria. All videos, reports, live coverage from the first days of the war are provided by them. Chams Sarkis, the founder of SMART, told Russian site “Snob”:
“Now most of Syrians consider you an enemy. I’m not sure that Russians are aware of that now. They have acquired enemies in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and now in Syria. And once you’re an enemy of Syria, you are becoming an enemy of the entire Arab world. And it’s not a trifle – to be the enemy of all Arabs.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov canceled his planned visit to Istanbul. He recommended Russian citizens not visit Turkey due to the increased terrorist threat. Lavrov said: “There’s a threat over there no less than in Egypt.”
The question of cancellation of flights of Russian tourists to Turkey is already officially raised. Now there are more then 10,000 Russian citizens are in Turkey.
The popular Russian web site Regnum.ru states:
“It’s undoubtedly necessary to evacuate all Russians from Turkey, as in the case of Egypt. Then we should declare a blockade of the Turkish resorts. As a result Turkey will lose many billions of dollars (last year, for example, the Russian tourists spent in Turkey more than $ 3.5 billion, not including cost of hotels.” )
“Turkish businessmen hear the toll of the bell” – happily declared Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Maybe the presidential spokesman doesn’t know that only 10% of foreign tourists in Turkey are from Russia.
But what about Russians? With Egypt and Turkey gone, Russians seem to loose all the places where those, who can afford to go for vacations to warm places, used to go. Even Crimea now is closed to tourists due to major electricity blackout. The operational headquarters for energy in Crimea just informed the public that, starting from December, Crimean resorts will temporarily stop receiving guests due to the expected cold weather and the lack of heat.
Besides, because of Russian sanctions against European countries, Turkey is now almost the only country supplying Russia with fruits and vegetables.
A prominent journalist Leonid Pavlyuchik writes in Facebook:
“Our travel agencies tied to Turkey, our construction industry depends on Turkish workers, a huge proportion of our trade includes the Turkish fruits, vegetables, clothing, textiles, – all these are businesses, will they enjoy their own ruin?”
