MOSCOW, January 10. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained over 100 illegal arms dealers in 40 Russian regions, the FSB public relations center told TASS.
"The Federal Security Service, in cooperation with the Russian police and Rosgvardiya, have thwarted the activities of 109 residents of 40 regions of the country, who were involved in illegal weapons trafficking, as well as in restoring the operational characteristics of commercial firearms at underground workshops and selling them," the FSB noted.
According to the special service, 355 firearms of domestic and foreign manufacture, including machine guns, automatic rifles, submachine guns, pistols, revolvers, rifles, carbines, shell guns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, grenades, over 35 kg (77 pounds) of explosives (gunpowder, TNT), and more than 94,600 rounds of various caliber have been taken off the black market. "The activity of 38 underground workshops involved in weapons modernization and ammunition manufacturing has been stopped," the security service added.
Special activities were carried out in Moscow, the Donetsk People's Republic, the republics of Adygea, Khakassia, Komi, Sakha, Tyva, as well as the Belgorod, Bryansk, Chelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Kaluga, Kemerovo, Kherson, Kirov, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Kurgan, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Primorsky, Rostov, Ryazan, Sakhalin, Samara, Saratov, Stavropol, Sverdlovsk, Tomsk, Tula, Tver, Tyumen, Ulyanovsk, Vladimir, Voronezh, Yaroslavl, and Zaporozhye regions. "Operational and search activities and investigative actions have been performed at the places of residence of the illegal arms dealers," the FSB said.