The Kremlin Wednesday condemned as unacceptable an alleged U.S. ultimatum to Turkey designed to force it to cancel a deal to buy Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems and purchase U.S. Patriot missile systems instead.
Moscow was responding to a CNBC report which said Washington had given Turkey just over two weeks to scrap the Russian deal and do an arms deal with the U.S. instead or risk severe penalties. "Turkey has a little more than two weeks to decide whether to complete a complex arms deal with the U.S. or risk severe penalties by going through with an agreement to buy a missile system from Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matte," the report said Tuesday.
When asked about the CNBC report by reporters yesterday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
"We regard this extremely negatively. We consider such ultimatums to be unacceptable, and we are going on the many statements made by representatives of Turkey's leadership headed by President (Tayyip) Erdoğan that the S-400 deal is already complete and will be implemented."