MOSCOW, December 15. /TASS/. The assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov aimed to undermine Russian-Turkish relations and the settlement in Syria, but this attempt has failed, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, commenting on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy.
"We appreciate the fact that the Turkish judicial authorities decisively condemned this barbaric act of aggression that an outstanding Russian diplomat fell an innocent victim to. Together with our Turkish colleagues, we held a scrupulous investigation into all the circumstances of this crime. The gradual development of a dialogue with Ankara, including on a number of key fields, suggests that the main idea of the instigators of this atrocity was to undermine the normalization of bilateral relations at the time and to undermine the collective efforts on the stabilization of the situation and the beginning of a political settlement in Syria. All this has completely failed," the diplomat noted.
She noted that this tragedy makes it necessary to take the security of Russian citizens and diplomatic mission extremely seriously, and to combat terrorism with an even stronger resolve.
"We honor the good memory of Andrey Karlov, who gave his life on duty and tirelessly protected the interests of our homeland," she underscored.
Karlov was assassinated on December 19, 2016, while making a speech at a photo expo in Ankara. The attacker - police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas - was killed on site. The Russian Foreign Ministry classified the incident as a terror attack, while Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal probe over charges of international terrorism. The diplomat was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia.
On March 9, an Ankara court sentenced five defendants in Karlov’s case to life sentences, eight defendants to between 5 and 15 years in prison, and acquitted six people. The court also separated the cases of nine fugitive defendants, including cleric Fethullah Gulen, into a separate proceeding.