MOSCOW, August 22. /TASS/. Most Russians - 79% - are confident that the country’s authorities will be able to protect Crimea’s citizens from any possible acts of sabotage, a survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center showed on Monday.

"Seventy-nine percent of Russians have no doubt that the authorities are capable of protecting the citizens of Crimea from any further attacks. The respondents recommended that Russia’s authorities be more vigilant and tighten border control and its security (33%)," the opinion poll stated.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed (67%) know that the Russian Federal Security Service had thwarted a terrorist plot in the Black Sea peninsula earlier this month. Some 37% of Russians accused Ukraine’s authorities of being behind the foiled attempt, while another 12% suspected the United States of having a role in it.

According to the pollster’s general director, Valery Fyodorov, "Russians are keeping a watchful eye on the issue of Crimea’s security and this is the country’s primary social fact that our new poll has revealed. The second is that Russians have no doubt who prepared this terrorist attack and who should be responsible for it."

The poll was conducted on August 13-14 among 1,600 respondents in 46 Russian regions, with a margin of error not exceeding 3.5%.

On August 10, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced it had thwarted a sabotage attempt in Crimea plotted by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate. A number of saboteurs was spotted in the small hours of August 7 near the city of Armyansk, close to the border with Ukraine. Two Russian servicemen were killed in the process of detaining the terrorists. The aborted terror attempts were designed to target Crimea’s critical infrastructure and vital facilities, the FSB revealed.