The militants, who have called Putin their sworn enemy, are fighting to create an Islamist state in the North Caucasus region and have carried out deadly attacks in Moscow.
“It is quite possible that criminal insurgents could become more active (ahead of the election),” Medvedev was shown on state-owned television telling the leadership of the Federal Security Service, successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB.
“I demand that you use the skills you’ve acquired in the recent years...to detect and curb provocations by all types of extremists,” he said at their headquarters at Lubyanka Square.
A suicide bomber killed 37 people in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport last year in the most recent large-scale attack.
Medvedev’s remarks came days after Russia‘s top militant Doku Umarov said rebels will avoid attacks on the country’s citizens.
Chechen-born Umarov said rallies against a disputed election that gave Putin’s ruling United Russia party a parliamentary majority last year were proof that his support had fallen.
A series of apartment bombings in 1999 galvanised public opinion against Chechen separatists and catapulted Putin to the presidency in an election in March 2000.
Putin is reviled by the militants for sending troops that year to Chechnya to crush a rebel government and re-establish Kremlin rule.
Russia‘s insurgency, now most active in the provinces surrounding Chechnya, is rooted in the war that began in 1999 and a previous 1994-1996 war the Kremlin waged against Chechen rebels. — Reuters
