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FSB nabs 93 gunmakers, seizes over 250 firearms in nationwide security sweep

It is reported that the security measures were carried out in November-December 2022

© Russian Federal Security Service/TASS , archive

MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) apprehended 93 clandestine gunmakers in 38 Russian regions, seizing over 250 firearms in a nationwide security sweep over the past two months, the FSB press office told TASS on Tuesday.

"The Federal Security Service jointly with the Interior Ministry and the National Guard busted the criminal activity of 93 residents in the country’s 38 regions complicit in recovering the combat properties of civilian guns in underground workshops and their sale," the press office said.

The FSB seized 253 firearms of domestic and foreign manufacture from illegal circulation and busted the activity of 38 underground workshops for modernizing weapons and making ammunition, it said.

The security measures were carried out in November-December 2022, it said.

The underground gunmakers were exposed and apprehended in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol, the Karachay-Circassian Region, the Republics of Altai, Dagestan, Karelia, North Ossetia-Alania and Tatarstan, the Altai, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Primorsky and Stavropol Regions, the Kemerovo - Kuzbass Region, the Astrakhan, Belgorod, Vladimir, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kirov, Kurgan, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Pskov, Rostov, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tambov, Tver, Tomsk, Ulyanovsk and Yaroslavl Regions, it specified.

In all, the FSB seized 10 machine guns, 26 assault rifles, 17 submachine guns, 106 pistols and revolvers, 94 rifles and carbines, 11 grenade launchers and flamethrowers, 343 artillery rounds of various caliber, 316 fuses, detonators and igniters, over 160 kg of explosives, (gunpowder, TNT), more than 40,000 cartridges of various caliber, 16 PM-4 electric exploders, firearms’ basic parts and components, the FSB press office said.

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