MOSCOW, May 23. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin's old statements on the fight against terrorism remain relevant today, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

"Everything that was said then (in the late 1990s and early 2000s - TASS) is still relevant today," Peskov stressed, commenting on Putin's remarks regarding terrorists, such as the one about "whacking them in the outhouse."

Asked whether the Kremlin considered it necessary to toughen rhetoric in relation to saboteurs against the background of their attack on the Belgorod Region, Peskov said that "it's not about rhetoric, it's about real action."

"What was said then (more than 20 years ago - TASS) with regard to terrorism is fully relevant now," Peskov said.

At the start of the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus in September 1999, Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, declared that terrorists would be chased everywhere: "Should we catch them in the toilet, we will whack them in the outhouse, after all. That's it. The subject is closed for good." The saying has since become a catch phrase.

As Putin himself admitted in July 2011 at a meeting with employees at the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, he was a bit apprehensive afterwards. He thought it may have been a "slip of the tongue," but the reactions from the public at large to his phrase made him realize that even though on the face of it the phrase looked wrong, essentially he hit the nail on the head.