MOSCOW — President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, speaking a day after an explosion in St.
Petersburg, said on Thursday that he had ordered security agents to “take no
prisoners” during terrorist attacks, and authorized the police to “liquidate
the bandits on the spot.”
Mr. Putin has long
burnished his image as tough on terrorism, and the comments were noteworthy not
so much for signifying a change in policy — Russian counterterrorism forces
have shot and killed dozens of terrorism suspects over the years — as for
displaying the antiterrorism swagger he was known for early in his tenure.
He is now running for a fourth term as president, and analysts
expected the campaign to focus on his decision to annex Crimea from Ukraine, a move
that has been popular in Russia. The election is scheduled for March 18, the
fourth anniversary of the annexation.
But a series of
attacks and thwarted plots have recently brought terrorism back into the
limelight. Mr. Putin’s comments came a day after a bomb exploded in a grocery
store in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, wounding about a dozen
people. And earlier this month, Mr. Putin thanked President Trump after the
Central Intelligence Agency passed to Russian security services information about an
Islamic State plot to detonate bombs in a cathedral and other
sites, also in St. Petersburg.
At first, the police
did not refer to the grocery store explosion as terrorism, but Mr. Putin said
on Thursday that it was, in fact, a terrorist attack.
Photo
President Vladimir V. Putin,
center-left, attended an awards ceremony in Moscow on Thursday for Russian
soldiers returning from Syria. CreditPool
photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev
The explosive device
had a power equivalent to about 200 grams, or seven ounces, of TNT, the Russian
authorities said, and it was laced with bolts to act as shrapnel. A man the
authorities described as having a non-Slavic appearance had placed a backpack
containing the bomb in a locker at the supermarket, then fled.
Speaking at an awards
ceremony for Russian soldiers returning from Syria, Mr. Putin called the
military intervention there a success but warned of the risks of Islamic
militants from the former Soviet Union returning to Russia after fighting.
“Yesterday I ordered
the director of the Federal Security Service, while arresting these bandits, to
act, obviously, only within the limits of the law,” Mr. Putin said, referring
to returning Islamic fighters. “But if the lives or health of our employees and
our officers are threatened — to act decisively, to take no prisoners, to
liquidate the bandits on the spot.”
The comment echoed
Mr. Putin’s taunt to Chechen terrorists, that he would “rub them out in the outhouse,” which
catapulted him to new heights of popularity before his first run for president,
in 2000.
There is little doubt of the leader’s chances of victory in
March, as he has approval ratings of about 80 percent. The only credible
opposition candidate, Aleksei A. Navalny, has been barred from running.
On Thursday, Mr.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that the authorities
intended to investigate Mr. Navalny for illegally calling for street protests
and a boycott of the vote.
In another sign of a
crackdown on the opposition — despite Mr. Putin’s popularity — a video Mr.
Navalny had posted on YouTube was blocked for people in Russia on Thursday.
Separately, the police detained Ilya Yashin, another activist who had called on
supporters to protest the election, on Thursday.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com
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