MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. Issues of settling the Ukrainian south-east conflict, as well as the problem of expansion of the Islamic State terrorist activity were discussed at a meeting of President Vladimir Putin with permanent members of the Russian Security Council, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
"The meeting participants had a detailed discussion of last week’s Minsk agreements on settling the situation in Ukraine’s south-east, taking into account telephone contacts of the Minsk summit participants as well as in the context of consultations planned to be held shortly," he said.
"The Russian Security Council members strongly condemned another barbaric murder of Egyptian Christians committed by Islamic State terrorists in Libya," the Kremlin spokesman said. "The meeting participants expressed deep condolences to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as well as to the Egyptian people represented by him," he added.
On Sunday evening, militants of the Islamic State made public a video showing the execution of 21 Egyptian Christian — followers of the Coptic Church — coming from the city of Samalut in the Minya province south of Cairo. They were captured by the extremists in Libya at the end of last year, and since then their fate has been unknown. The kidnapped Egyptian workers, all Coptic Christians, were seized in December and January from the coastal town of Sirte in eastern Libya, now under the control of Islamist groups.
"The meeting participants said the continued expansion of the geography of terrorist acts staged by the Islamic State and Islamic extremism in general causes particular concern," Peskov said.
The Security Council meeting also discussed a number of Russia’s domestic agenda issues, the presidential press secretary said.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, head of the presidential administration Sergey Ivanov, Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko, Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and his deputy Rashid Nurgaliev, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Federal Security Service (FSB) director Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov, as well as permanent member of the Security Council Boris Gryzlov.