ANKARA, January 15. /TASS/. Turkey sees no correlation between Ankara purchasing Russian S-400 missile systems and a possible purchase of the MIM-104 Patriot missile system from the US, Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin stated on Tuesday during a press conference in Ankara.
"To our mind, there is no connection, no correlation and no conditions between the purchase of the S-400 and Patriot missile systems," he said.
It was reported on December 18 that the US administration had made a decision to sell Patriot surface-to-air missile systems worth $3.5 billion to Turkey. The permission was obtained for the sale of 80 Patriot MIM-104E surface-to-air missiles and 60 PAC-3 missiles and the corresponding equipment.
On the following day, Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the purchase of Patriot systems would not affect Moscow’s agreement with Ankara on supplies of S-400 missile systems.
The media reported in November 2016 that talks were underway on possible sales of Russian S-400 systems to Turkey. The Russian side confirmed that the contract had been signed in September 2017. Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said that deployment of the S-400 systems would begin in October 2019. In December 2017, CEO of Russia’s Rostec corporation Sergei Chemezov reported the total cost of the contract at 2.5 billion dollars.