September 6, 2016
Dear members of the Council!
I take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the invitation and for the opportunity to address the Council of Internal Affairs Ministers of the CIS member-states.
Since its establishing your Council has been paying deliberate attention to cooperation with other branch cooperation bodies of the Commonwealth in one main direction, which is cooperation in combating crime and its organized forms in particular, counteracting terrorism and extremism, developing and implementing specialized inter-state programmes.
I would like to highlight an atmosphere of fruitful and constructive cooperation and interaction which exists between the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center and Office for the Coordination of the Fight Against Organized Crime and Other Dangerous Types of Crime on the Territory of CIS member-states which a working body of the Council. We periodically exchange information on the trends in development of operational situation in the CIS, including the one developed under the influence of terrorist and extremist organizations, as well as best practices in developing regulatory and methodological database of counteraction to national and collective security threats.
Over the past years this topical line of joint work has become systematic and got to a whole new level. I would like to note that there are still opportunities for improving our joint and coordinated work.
Dear colleagues!
The CIS Anti-Terrorism Center has created and maintained a Specialized Data Bank which contains, inter alia, information on persons charged with terrorist offences and being on interstate wanted list. As of today the Commonwealth countries are searching more than five thousand people linked with terrorist activity. We make ongoing efforts to organize such data and intensify search operations. Since 2011 we have been organizing annual complex of target operations under the code name "Tral – Antiterror" aimed at apprehension and extradition of wanted terrorists.
Moreover, the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center collects and processes information on citizens of our states who have left the Commonwealth to participate in armed hostilities along terrorist organizations, in the Middle East in particular. Esteemed participants of the meeting!
Today under uneasy realities the joint activity of the competent authorities of the Commonwealth states as well as CIS authorised bodies in conducting interstate search of persons wanted for terrorist and extremist offences is taking on specific significance for providing national and public security. As the President of the Russian Federation noted in his statement at the meeting of the Council of the CIS Heads of States, "we definitely cannot admit that they employ the gained in Syria experience in our home later on".
All this makes us review the arsenal of technologies to counteract international terrorism. We consider the following directions of joint activity as most burning: - organization of interaction between competent authorities of the CIS states in identifying potential foreign terrorist-fighters, as well as persons who are thought to desire participation in illegal activity of terrorist and organizations abroad ; - organization of interaction between security bodies, law enforcement, migration services, border security services and other involved agencies in identifying persons who failed to return in due time from Middle East countries back to Commonwealth states and who are potential foreign fighters; - organization of interaction with public and religious associations, higher education institutions in counteracting recruitment of the Commonwealth citizens into terrorist and extremiist organizations. In this regard, the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center has already implemented both single events and long-term projects each of which suggests close cooperation with the Council of Internal Affairs Ministers and its working body.
Specifically, the Anti-Terrorism Center in cooperation with the partners from the CIS member-states organizes annual scheduled joint anti-terrorism exercises scripted basing on actual operational situation.
In addition to traditional power component associated with hostage release, assault on seized by simulated terrorists facilities, we for many years have been paying attention to logistics of information exchange between special services and law enforcement bodies of the Commonwealth, new anti-terrorism technologies.
Thus, the first joint cyber-exercise "Cyber-Anti-Terror 2016" took place under the CIS ATC auspices in the Republic of Belarus in May this year and involved more 700 specialists from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.
The main mission of the anti-terrorism exercise was to master skills of collective response to disseminated group and massive cyber-attacks on key infrastructure facilities. Specifically, they included prevention of DDoS-attacks as well as other integrated information-technical actions aimed to destabilize control systems of a key infrastructure facility.
It is worth mentioning that the Cyber-Anti-Terror 2016" exercise was conducted not in virtual media and on mock-ups of automated control systems, but in really functional energy units of the Lukoml Power Plant. The cyber-exercise results allowed elaboration of specific practical recommendations for efficient counteraction to terrorist manifestations in the cyber space both at national and inter-state levels.
The conducted exercise has unearth high interest of our partners in deepening this problem, practical implementation of such important nods in counter-terrorism and counter-extremism as information warfare technologies, cyber space control and computer attack early warning technologies, situation automated reconstruction technologies and behaviour forecasting of so called risk groups.
Specificity of open source analytics in the counter-terrorism and counter-extremism context has become of no less interest of the partners.
Today, the Center has embarked on preparation of a specialized information-methodological workshop tentatively named as "Basic analysis and forecasting of terrorist threats in the course of implementation of information warfare technologies" to be preliminary held in October this year in Moscow.
We in cooperation with the Office for the Coordination of the Fight Against Organized Crime and Other Dangerous Types of Crime on the Territory of CIS member-states, Coordination Service of the Council of the Commanders of the Border Forces, other CIS branch cooperation bodies, all involved agencies of the Commonwealth states will continue working in this direction by voicing confidence that through integrated coordinated measures the efficiency of anti-terrorism measures can be significantly increased.
Dear colleagues!
Dynamics of the geopolitical situation in the world and accompanying transformation of terrorist threats, appearance of new subjects of international terrorist activity and their use of almost the entire range of contemporary warfare technologies make the security agencies, law enforcement bodies and special services of the Commonwealth states provide not just full mobilization of own resources but find forms of national and regional security arrangements comparable with the unfolding situation.
The Council of Internal Affairs Ministers of the CIS member-states possesses own resources of CT and CVE counteraction legal mechanisms.
Today coordination of joint operations is most topical in the established counter-terrorism system, especially in identifying illegal activity of foreign fighters and mercenaries.
Thank you for attention.
