Oleg Kuznetsov: "The fightings in Syria provide the actual material, allowing to prevent terrorist attacks in Russia"

Today, the FSB announced the arrest of four members of the terrorist sabotage group that was preparing terrorist acts in Moscow. It is reported that the citizens of Moldova and Tajikistan kept firearms, ammunition and a large quantity of explosives. They intended to use them to carry out a terrorist act by the order of the ISIS emissary. The political analyst and candidate of Historical Sciences, Oleg Kuznetsov, spoke in an interview to Vestnik Kavkaza about how this news will impact the citizens of the Russian capital.

- Should the Muscovites worry, that those terrorists were not the only terrorists entrenched in Moscow?

- According to the annual reports of the board of the FSB of Russia and annual report of the Director,  about 50-70 attacks are prevented in our country each year. That means, one terrorist attack is being prepared, but not carried out every week. All this indicates the very serious operational positions of the Russian special services among extremists and among the various religious groups, the adherents of which can become such extremists. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies  cope with the task of securing the safety of our citizens. Practice shows that some terrorist attacks are more incidental, than a general trend, and the law enforcement agencies earn their own living fairly enough.

The fact that the militants of ISIS were detained is natural too, as far as  the last year on the eve of the terrorist attacks in Paris, ISIS claimed that it would relocate the terrorist activities to the capitals of the countries-members of the Anti-Terrorist Coalition. France and Belgium were not ready for this. Somehow Great Britain was able to cope with it. And one would expect that Russia as one of the main actors in Syria would become a  target of the terrorist attacks.

The fighting in Syria provide the actual material and information regarding people, who are taking part in the hostilities on the side of the international terrorists. Some files are captured, prisoners are interrogated. The entire volume of this operational information is analyzed and systematized, the requests for search of the potential suspects are sent. While such activities are carried out on the territory of Syria, there is an opportunity to get the first-hand information directly from the captured instructors or original documents. This work is the most effective. The information is transmitted in the shortest time, and the insurgents sent to some particular country  have not much time to settle down, get accomplices, and find the objects for the terrorist attacks. In this regard, the time factor plays a very important role. And the lack of it allows the Russian law enforcement agencies to play in advance.

Today's arrest demonstrates that our intelligence services have the handicap time, the excellence in the information and technical support, and the possibility of organizing the control of undesirables. This brings fruits in terms of prevention of the terrorist attacks.

- What precautions must be taken by the Muscovites?

- It is necessary to report actively about the suspicious objects and  persons to the law enforcement authorities. An attack does not happen spontaneously, it is being prepared for a long time. The place and delivery methods are being chosen, the backups are being prepared. Everything suspicious and unusual, beyond the scope of the everyday life, should be reported to the law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The alert level of the law enforcement agencies has been upgraded, their duty schedule has been enhanced, this means that the information between all the law enforcement agencies is shared rapidly. As a rule, the security services have general information about the intentions and perpetrators, but it is not easy to find them in the megacity. Therefore, any seemingly random information may become a missing piece of the puzzle that would allow to identify the perpetrators and prevent a terrorist attack.

The recommendations that we hear every day in the subway - to report the suspicious persons and objects to the law enforcement officers and subway workers - are really efficient and effective. It is the first.

The second. It is necessary to pay attention, if possible, on any unusual, strange inscriptions. This may not always be graffiti, it may be the encoded information, for example, about the attack sites. Therefore, all unusual, which has appeared recently, such as abandoned car with people around it, is a real testimony of the potential danger, about which the police and security services must be informed.