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Terrorist cells may get active when COVID-19 restrictions are gone - Security Council

Russia in 2019 within the framework of the struggle against terrorist and extremist ideologies blocked more than 84,000 Internet pages and deleted about 5,000 materials recognized as extremist and prohibited

MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. Terrorist cells may get active again after the coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions are lifted, the deputy chief of Russia’s Security Council, Yuri Kokov, told the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview published on Tuesday.

"Nobody should be misled by a certain decline in terrorist activity amid the pandemic," he warned. "When the anti-epidemic restrictions begin to be lifted, terrorist cells may get active again very fast."

About the methods of terrorist propaganda Kokov said they widely employed psychological manipulation with individuals and groups of people with the aim of undermining faith in social values, fomenting radical sentiment and breeding alarm, fear and panic.

"Youth and teen-agers are the terrorists’ very vulnerable target audience. Terrorists are keen to brainwash it by using computer games, music videos and cartoons that propagate brutality and violence," he warned.

"Quite often this propaganda and psychological techniques affect young women, who are promised wealthy and happy family lives in a foreign country," Kokov said. "Instead of marrying rich husbands they end up in terrorist gangs and are eventually used as suicide bombers."

Kokov said that Russia in 2019 within the framework of the struggle against terrorist and extremist ideologies blocked more than 84,000 Internet pages and deleted about 5,000 materials recognized as extremist and prohibited. In the first half of 2020 31,000 websites were blocked and 3,000 extremist materials deleted.