Russia’s central Volga region is ill-prepared to handle a terrorist threat, a Kremlin envoy was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Thursday, noting that authorities failed to notice imitation bombs planted to test their alertness.
Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime minister who now is President Vladimir Putin’s representative to the Volga region, said that in one of the tests, a simulated terrorist group broke through a barbed wire fence surrounding a power plant and set up mock bombs. The “terrorists” then allegedly left through the main security checkpoint, Interfax quoted Kiriyenko as saying at a conference of senior law enforcement officers in Ulyanovsk, 720 kilometers (430 miles) east of Moscow. Security officers only noticed that something was amiss an hour and a half later, he said. Kiriyenko also said that fake bombs planted at the railway station, a central market and a meat factory all went unnoticed. “This is the situation not only in the Ulyanovsk region but throughout the Volga district,” he said. Kiriyenko said a security plan was being prepared, and he warned officials that if they “do not obey this plan, they will be dismissed.” Full Story
