MOSCOW, December 16 /TASS/. Eight Turkish students have been expelled from the Voronezh Institute of High Technologies for truancy and poor progress — the only confirmed case of Turkish students being sent down from Russian Institutions of Higher Learning, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on the ministry's website.

"We are closely watching the situation in this sphere, which is sensitive for the people in the two countries. In his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly (parliament), delivered on December 3, Russia President Vladimir Putin said that the Russian leadership was not putting a sign of equation between Turkey’s ruling elite and the Turkish people. We believe that if such ‘extremes’ have taken place anywhere (in Russia), the people responsible for them should know that such actions produce a negative impact on the image of our country in the first place," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Previous media reports said that some Russian institutions of higher learning were expelling Turkish students because of growing tensions in bilateral relations between Russia and Turkey.