MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. This year a total of 59 terrorism-related crimes have been prevented in Russia, including 8 terrorist plots, the Federal Security Service (FSB) chief said on Tuesday.
During this year’s counter-terrorism operations in the North Caucasus, 233 gunmen have been “neutralized,” including 38 gang leaders. Another 637 gang members and their accomplices have been detained, Alexander Bortnikov said.
“A total of 272 self-made explosive devices have been seized, including a significant number of firearms and weapons,” he said.
Another 219 people have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in 2014, including four people behind last December’s terrorist attack in Volgograd, in southern Russia that killed 34.
Some 315 counter-terrorism exercises have been also conducted in an effort to “ensure high readiness of our forces and means to respond to the terrorist threats,” Bortnikov said.
The level of terrorist activities has shrunken almost threefold in Russia in 2014, Bortnikov who chairs the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said at a final committee meeting this year.
“Thanks to anti-terrorist measures, an annual downward tendency in the number of terrorism-related crimes persists in Russia. Their number has reduced almost threefold year-on-year and has dropped fourfold against 2012,” Bortnikov said. Seventy-eight similar crimes were reported this year, whereas there were 218 of them in 2013, he said.
Meanwhile, gunmen still have some potential for crimes, the FSB chief noted. “The December 4 events in (Chechnya’s capital) the city of Grozny point to this,” as policemen had curbed a raid of gunmen at the cost of their lives in the city.