Russian citizens may be among the 10,000 foreign terrorist fighters on the territory of Syria and Iraq, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Agence France-Presse published Friday on the website of the Russian diplomatic office.
"Due to the fact that establishing the nationality of foreign terrorist fighters in many cases is difficult, the Russian foreign ministry has no precise information on this issue," she said. - "For our part, we inform that according to the monitoring group of the UN Security Council sanctions committees 1267/1989/2253 and 1988, the number of foreign terrorist fighters in the Syrian-Iraqi zone exceeds 10,000 people. It can be assumed that there are Russian citizens among them".
As noted by the diplomat, in recent years it was possible to return more than 340 juvenile citizens of the Russian Federation to their homeland from Syria and Iraq. "In recent years, 341 underage Russian citizens from Syria and Iraq have been evacuated. The relevant work is carried out under the auspices of the Office of the Presidential commissioner for children's rights with the assistance of the Russian foreign ministry," Zakharova stressed.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Press Service of the Russian Foreign Ministry / TASS
Based on materials from TASS