MOSCOW -- Turkey and Russia traded barbs and threats Thursday as the fallout from Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane threatened to lead to a breach in the countries' relations.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev gave government officials two days to draw up a list of ways for Russia to curb commercial ties and investment projects. That included the possible shelving of a multibillion-dollar deal to build a gas pipeline through Turkey that President Vladimir Putin once trumpeted as an alternative route for substantial Russian gas exports to Europe.
Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stoked the confrontation with sharp words.
On Thursday, Putin accused Turkey of ruining diplomatic relations between the two countries by refusing to apologize for what he said was a clear offense. Erdogan asserted his country would shoot down the Russian plane all over again under the same circumstances.
Putin repeated his accusation that the downing of the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 was "a stab in the back" and reiterated Russia's position that the plane was brought down over Syria, not Turkey.
"We have still not heard any comprehensible apologies from the Turkish political leaders, or any offers to compensate for the damage caused or promises to punish the criminals for their crime," Putin said at the Kremlin, addressing 15 new foreign ambassadors who were presenting their credentials. His remarks were carried live on national television. "One gets the impression that the Turkish leaders are deliberately leading Russian-Turkish relations into a gridlock, and we are sorry to see this."
Leaders in Turkey said no apology would be forthcoming.
"Faced with the same violation today, Turkey would give the same response," Erdogan told a group of officials in Ankara.
The standoff between the two leaders boded ill for the mission of President Francois Hollande of France, who arrived in Moscow to hold talks over dinner with Putin as part of his effort after the Paris terrorist attacks Nov. 13 to cement an international coalition to confront the Islamic State.
Even before any formal plans for economic sanctions were drawn up, Russia was retaliating.
Hundreds of trucks bearing Turkish fruits and vegetables and other products were stacking up at the Georgian border with Russia, Russian news media reported, as inspections slowed to a crawl and Russian officials suggested there might be a terrorist threat from the goods.
"This is only natural in light of Turkey's unpredictable actions," Dmitry Peskov, the presidential spokesman, told reporters.
In the Krasnodar region, a group of 39 Turkish businessmen attending an agriculture exhibition was detained for entering Russia on tourist rather than business visas -- a common practice -- and were set for deportation, according to a report on the website of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.
Government officials announced that a special year of cultural exchanges scheduled for all of 2016 would be canceled.
The biggest question about possible economic fallout hung over major energy projects, including a gas pipeline across the Black Sea and the construction of Turkey's first nuclear power plant.
Sanctions could be damaging for both countries, even if trade was down in 2015 from a year earlier.
Russia was the biggest source of Turkish imports in 2014, with $25 billion, or 10 percent of the total, according to an analysis by investment banking firm Renaissance Capital, much of it likely natural gas. Turkey exported $6 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2014, 4 percent of all exports, and nearly 4.5 million Russians visited last year, according to the analysis.
A Section on 11/27/2015