After St. Petersburg Explosion, Putin Orders Police to ‘Liquidate’ Terrorists
President Vladimir 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.
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.”
If someone commits an act of terrorism here social workers become involved and make excuses for the terrorists
Far better than to be like the UK and welcome back returning terrorists - house them and retrain them