Putin vows payback, orders French cooperation after confirmation of Egypt plane bomb

Russian President Vladimir Putin (3rd L) with armed forces Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov (L), Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (2nd L), Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov (3rd R), Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (2nd R) and Director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Mikhail Fradkov (R) attend a meeting on Russian plane crash in Egypt at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia November 17, 2015. REUTERS/Alexei Nikolskyi/SPUTNIK/Kremlin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt and intensified air strikes against militants in Syria, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb had destroyed the plane last month, killing 224 people.

Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.