Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday expressed Ankara's condolences to Russia for the death of a Russian pilot when one of its warplanes was shot down by Turkey on the Syrian border last week.

"We expressed our sadness and expressed our condolences for the Russian pilot who lost his life," Turkish media quoted Cavusoglu as saying after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Belgrade, in the first high-level contact between the two sides since the incident on November 24.