One Russian pilot killed, another missing after jet shot down by Turkey

Russia says one of its pilots was killed and another is missing after their jet was shot down by Turkey over Syria - and a marine involved in their rescue attempt was also killed.

The pilots were shot at as they parachuted from the plane, Russia's defence ministry said. The marine's helicopter later came under fire.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Turkey will face “serious consequences” after shooting down a Russian fighter jet.

“Today’s loss is a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists,” Putin told a press conference as he hosted King Abdullah of Jordan in Sochi.

“Today's tragic event will have serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations. We have always treated Turkey, not only as a close neighbour but as a friendly state. I don't know in whose interests today's incident is but it's not in our interest.”

Ankara says that its jets shot at the plane after warnings that it was violating Turkey’s airspace, but Moscow insists that the jet never strayed from Syrian airspace.

“Our pilots and our plane never threatened Turkey in any way – this was an obvious fact,” Putin said. “They were conducting an operation to fight ISIS.”

He inferred that Turkey was supporting ISIS by giving militants its indirect “protection”, allowing it to commit the Paris attacks and other atrocities.

The Russian president criticised Turkey for immediately calling an extraordinary Nato meeting “as if Russia just downed a Turkish jet”, and questioned whether Ankara wants “Nato to serve the interests of Isis” before calling on the international community to “unite against a common evil”.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said that allied assessment of the incident shows that the Russian plane did indeed fly into Turkish airspace.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the jet had crashed in the mountainous Jabal Turkmen area of Latakia, where air strikes and fighting between rebels and Syrian government forces had been reported earlier on Tuesday.

Russian military helicopters searched for the pilot and navigator near the crash site in the predominantly Turkmen Bayir Bucak area, Turkey's Dogan news agency reported.

A spokesman for a rebel group operating in the area, the 10th Brigade of the Coast, told the Associated Press that the jet's crew had tried to parachute into government-held territory, but that they came under fire from members of the group.

Turkey gets about 60% of its natural gas from Russia and demand is growing, especially at a time when low oil prices have hammered its export-dependent economy. Russia has a $12 billion project designed to ship gas across the Black Sea to Turkey and eventually onward to Europe.