Crisis over 17 seconds: How a Russian warplane's brief presence in Turkish airspace sent tensions soaring

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The radar shows when the Russian aircraft crossed very briefly into Turkish airspace. The incursion led Turkish fighter jets to fire at the bomber. Photos: EPA, Reuters

Published: 4:11am, 26 Nov 2015

In the blue sky above northern Syria, a dark shape moved. The shape was a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft. Russian jets based at the Khmeimim airbase in coastal Latakia had been pounding rebel positions. Under cover of Russian air strikes, Syrian government forces have been attacking. Their target wasn't Islamic State. Rather, the SU-24s had been hitting the homes and villages of Turkmens, Syrian citizens of Turkish ethnicity.These strikes had infuriated Ankara. So much so that Turkey's foreign minister summoned Russia's ambassador last week to demand that Moscow halt its operations around the Syrian-Turkish border. To no avail. About 7am, an Su-24 took off on another mission. It began flying north towards the border and a densely wooded area known as Turkmen mountain.

In this file photo from the G-20 summit on Nov. 16 in Antalya, Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greet the media before summit talks. Yesterday, Putin ordered the deployment of long-range air defense missiles to a Russian military base in Syria, 50km from the border of Turkey. Photo: AP

According to Turkey, the Su-24 looped several times over the attack zone and then headed towards Turkey, a Nato member state. It was, seemingly, the latest provocative incursion by Russian fighters into Turkish airspace. Earlier this month, Russian Su-30 and Su-24 jets did the same thing, despite warnings. Russia later admitted that one jet had got lost. On that occasion, Nato answered with an angry press release.

This time, the response was different. Turkey's general staff said it warned the Su-24 "10 times within five minutes" that it was about to violate Turkish airspace. Apparently, the jet's Russian pilots carried on. Turkey scrambled two F-16 fighters. At 7.24am, one of them opened fire with an air-to-air missile. It was the first time a Nato member state had attacked a Russian plane since the cold war.

Video shows the plane falling from the sky. It looks like a comet, orange flame and white-grey smoke coming from its tail. You can hear a rumble. After several seconds, the Su-24 disappears from view and ploughs into the mountainside. There is a cloud of thick black smoke. The video shows something else: the two Russian pilots falling to earth in white parachutes, having ejected.