The shooting of a Turkish shepherd on the Armenia-Turkey border has sparked international tensions, though there appears to be some confusion in Turkey as to precisely with whom they should be angry.

The episode began July 31, when a 35-year-old shepherd in Turkey's Kars province accidentally wandered over the border with Armenia to retrieve one of his sheep that had strayed. (Though some reports say the wayward animal was a cow.) Kars Governor Eyüp Tepe blamed Armenian soldiers for the incident, and Turkey's Foreign Ministry issued a strong statement blaming Armenia:

We strongly condemn the shooting and killing of an innocent Turkish citizen for a simple border violation which we understand to have had an innocent purpose. There is no explanation for the Armenian party’s use of disproportionate force in such an incident which may typically occur at the border.

But it's no secret that Armenia doesn't actually control that border -- Armenia's borders with Turkey and Iran are in fact patrolled by Russian soldiers (though there are some Armenian guards under Russian command). It soon became clear that it was a Russian unit responsible for the shooting. From Hurriyet Daily News:

A Turkish shepherd who crossed the border into Armenia opened fire at Russian frontier guards, who responded by returning the fire, Sergey Grechin, from the Russian Border Department of the Federal Security Service, has said, according to the Russian Itar Tass news agency. “It was a Russian border guard unit that was involved in the incident,” a senior official in the Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmed, along with a second source in the Armenian Defense Ministry.

Armenia issued a statement expressing regret, but not taking responsibility.

The incident took place in an atmosphere already made tense by an Armenian official's claim that his country should take back land lost to Turkey in the wake of the 1915 genocide, which prompted an angry response from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu, who called such thinking "delirium."

For Cold War nostalgists, the Russian role may carry with it a faint recall of the Cold War, when the border with Turkey was one of the very small stretches where the Soviet Union directly butted up against NATO, But now, news of the Russian involvement should tamp down tension, as it's much harder and less rewarding for Turkey to whip up nationalist sentiment against Russia than it is against Armenia.