There are up to 7,000 foreigners in Syria who came there from Russia and other former Soviet countries to join Islamic State, Russian president Vladimir Putin said speaking to leaders of the CIS in Kazakhstan.
“There are an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 fighters from Russia and other CIS member states fighting for ISIL. We certainly cannot allow them to use the experience they are getting in Syria on home soil,” Russia Today quotes him as saying.
According to the latest data provided by Russia’s FSB, about 2,400. Russian citizens are participants of the terrorist group ‘Islamic State’.
On September 30, Russian warplanes started to carry out air strikes in Syria. In a recent interview with TV channel “Russia 1” Vladimir Putin stressed that if one had not acted ‘proactively’, thousands of ‘people with Kalashnikovs’ would have entered Russia long time ago.
Russia is trying to support the government of al-Assad and ‘create the conditions for a political settlement’, Putin said.
