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Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev: The participants in the Security Council meeting reviewed issues related to ensuring rule of law, public order and security in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

The situation in the new regions of the Russian Federation remains complicated. For many years, the Kiev authorities encouraged organised crime on these territories, using criminal and neo-Nazi groups for their purposes, trying to control people by terrorist methods, harassing them on ethnic and religious grounds and cracking down on people even for expressing a neutral attitude to all things Russian.

These circumstances are still having a negative effect on the current situation. Kiev is expanding its terrorist activities with the assistance of the US and its allies. Accomplices of the Kiev regime are committing many grave crimes. Ukrainian special services are exerting large-scale information and psychological pressure to intimidate the population.

In this context, the Security Council has set the tasks of creating the conditions for the local population to live in safety and exercise the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of our country, and for the regions to continue integrating into Russia’s legal system.

We have provided for the failsafe, coordinated work of the public authorities and local government, in part, based on the existing territorial defence centres. Now the most important task is to form a full-fledged system of law enforcement bodies, staff them with professional personnel and provide them with proper material and technical support.

Law enforcement has been instructed to take effective measures to strictly observe the principle of inevitable punishment for violations of the law. The judicial bodies are already carrying out their legitimate activities in the entire liberated territory.

Instructions have been issued to organise additional operational and counter-intelligence activities against terrorists and measures to neutralise subversive groups and block channels of illegal weapons and ammunition trafficking. The participants emphasised the need to prevent recruitment by Western secret services, reveal agents of influence and counter the spread of the ideology of neo-Nazism and religious extremism, primarily among children and young people. Any attempts to destabilise the socio-political situation and undermine the Constitutional system will be severely suppressed in accordance with Russian legislation.

Plans were made to increase oversight of the spending of budget funds allocated for the social support of residents of the new regions and rebuilding destroyed infrastructure.

Considerable attention was paid to interaction with the local people that often find it hard to understand the unfamiliar regulations and powers of Russian agencies. Law enforcement bodies have been instructed to respond instantly to any signs of criminal offences, conduct explanatory work among the local population and render them competent legal assistance, exhibiting concern for the fate of every person.

Other institutional and legal measures have been drafted to enhance stability in the new regions of Russia.