Foreign special services can use terrorists for their own purposes — special attention should be paid to identifying these contacts.
This was announced on Wednesday by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the FSB board.
“I ask you to pay special attention to the opening of contacts between terrorist groups and foreign special services,” Putin said, noting that “everything is in progress, terrorists are also being used.”
He stressed that the terrorist network in the Russian Federation is trying to restore its activity. “Therefore, it is important not only to identify and eliminate terrorist cells, including the so-called sleeping, deeply conspiratorial ones, but also to analyze and predict the situation in general,” the president said.
Putin said that in 2020 it was possible to suppress the activities of 72 regular employees and more than 400 agents of the intelligence services of other states in the country. “The activities of 72 personnel and 423 agents of foreign special services have been suppressed,” the Russian leader noted.
Preventing Crime
According to the president, 72 terrorist crimes were prevented in Russia in 2020. Putin called terrorism the most acute and dangerous threat.
“In 2020, 72 terrorist crimes were prevented, which is a quarter more than a year earlier: [in 2019] there were 57,” the president said. According to him, this testifies that “in the overwhelming majority of cases it is possible to uncover criminal plans even at the stage of their preparation, thereby saving people’s lives and health.”
Terrorist challenges and threats are not decreasing, the president said.
“We see that the level of global challenges, such as terrorism, cross-border crime, cybercrime, are not decreasing,” the head of state said.
Putin emphasized that issues of state security, protection of citizens from internal and external threats are constantly in the focus of the country’s leadership and remain a priority.
At the same time, the Russian leader stressed that this year the FSB collegium is being held not in an expanded format, as before, but rather in a reduced format. “But this does not diminish the importance of our today’s event, unfortunately, these are the requirements of the current epidemiological situation,” Putin said, addressing all employees of the service. He thanked the FSB officers for their professional and efficient work, their readiness to solve all problems in non-standard conditions without reference to current circumstances.
Ensuring Russia’s cybersecurity requires new approaches, the number of attacks on important resources of the Russian Federation has tripled over the year, Putin said.
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