MOSCOW. Sept 21 (Interfax) - Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has denied Israeli media reports that repeated attempts by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone after the recent Ilyushin Il-20 incident have failed.
The Israeli media cited Minister Yisrael Katz as saying that Putin had refused to speak with al-Assad over the phone and the latter had to send a message to the Kremlin expressing his condolences.
"This is not true, you should not believe these reports of the Israeli media," Peskov told the press on Friday.
Putin gave his opinion on the Il-20 tragedy at his joint press conference with the Hungarian prime minister, Peskov said. "He was quite explicit, and there is no need for clarifications," he said.
On September 18, Putin described the incident as an accidental chain of events and said it should not be compared to the downing of a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 by Turkey in November 2015.