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Russian Security on High Alert Ahead of Sochi 2014


Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Rosa Khutor Alpine Center outside the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Feb. 6, 2013.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Rosa Khutor Alpine Center outside the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Feb. 6, 2013.
President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's security services to be on high alert on Thursday to protect against attacks by Islamist militants in the run up to next year's Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

Putin, speaking after a suicide bomber killed three policemen in a Caucasus province across the mountain range from the Sochi region, said "all anti-terrorist forces should be at the highest level of alertness and readiness."

"The most important thing here is the protection of people's lives," Putin told senior officials from the Federal Security Service. "It is necessary to provide reliable anti-terrorist protection of... large-scale public, international events soon to take place in our country."

Russia fought two wars against separatists in its Chechnya province following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a conflict that has slowly turned into an insurgency that aims to carve out an Islamic state in the Caucasus.

Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Games, is at the western end of the Caucasus Mountain range.
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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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