International terrorist organizations are ramping up their propaganda efforts in Russia’s North Caucasus regions, the director of the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) warned on Tuesday. Aleksandr Bortnikov accused the West of attempting to destabilize the Muslim-majority region.
He revealed that, since the start of the year, authorities had prevented 23 terrorist attacks and detained more than 200 suspects in those territories. In early August, Russia’s Interior Ministry reported an alarming surge in terrorism-related crimes in the first half of the year.
Speaking at a meeting of Russia’s Anti-Terrorist Committee, Bortnikov stated that “international terrorist organizations are intensifying their propaganda influence on the population of the North Caucasus, using the religious factor.”
According to the official, these groups are spreading “radical strains of Islam [which are] not traditional to Russia.” People peddling such ideologies are actively using the internet, as well as unofficial places of worship to disseminate their message.
The FSB director said the authorities’ top priority should be preventing the spread of terrorist ideologies in the North Caucasus.
In late August, the FSB reported that it had detained six alleged members of an unnamed international terrorist organization in the southern Republic of Ingushetia. The suspects had supposedly been planning an attack on several targets, including an Orthodox church.
Russian authorities had previously conducted a series of other anti-terrorist raids in several Muslim-majority southern regions.
Also in August, four inmates armed with bladed weapons took a number of guards hostage at a prison in Russia’s Volgograd Region. The attackers described themselves as members of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). All four were subsequently killed by police commando units during the storming of the prison. However, the incident also claimed the lives of four guards.
A similar episode took place at another penitentiary facility in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don in mid-June, with six inmates also declaring allegiance to the same terrorist organization.
That same month, a group of Islamist gunmen in Dagestan attacked several targets in two cities, including two churches, a synagogue, and a police post. The incident left 22 people dead before the six terrorists were eliminated.