MSNBC: Turkey Shoots Russian Fighter Jet Down Near the Syrian Border
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
BRZEZINSKI: "We'll begin this morning with breaking news. We've learned that Turkey has shot down a Russian military jet. It happened along the border between Turkey and Syria. Footage from Turkish television shows a warplane going down in flames in what looks like a wooded area. You can see a plume of smoke trailing behind the plane. The Turkish government said the Russian jet violated its air space. The jet was warned ten times before being shot down. Let's bring in NBC news chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel live in Istanbul. What more do we know at this point?"
ENGEL: "There's a major dispute right now in the circumstances of this plane that was shot down. A Russian sekoy 24, it was flying on a counterterrorism mission inside Syria and that it was shot by ground fire, that the pilots ejected. The fate of the pilots at this stage is still unclear. The Turkish government, however, has a different version of events. It said this Russian jet violated Turkish air space, was warn ten different times over the course of five minutes and then after being warned those ten times was engaged by two Turkish operated by U.S. Made American f-16 fighter jets and that it was shot down. A big question now, where are the pilots, what is the fate of the pilot. There's a claim one of the pilots is dead. This has the potential to be very explosive, frankly. This is the first time in recent memory a NATO country shot down a Russian plane and it shows the complete lack of coordination that we're seeing in Syria right now where you have the U.S. From Turkey and other places bombing targets in Syria, France doing the same, Russia doing the same and very little efforts being made to deconflict and coordinate that effort."