Liz Fuller
Speaking at a press conference on October 31, police Lieutenant General Sergei Bachurin, who heads Russia's federal Interior Ministry's directorate for the North Caucasus Federal District, claimed that during the first nine months of this year 296 militants were apprehended in the North Caucasus, the news agency Regnum reported.
Assuming that Bachurin was speaking just of suspected fighters, and not of fighters plus support personnel, that figure represents a fivefold increase over 2016, when just 49 fighters were captured in the course of the year, together with 328 support personnel.
https://www.rferl.org/a/caucasus-report-jump-in-militant-arrests/28831632.html
