MOSCOW, January 25 – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed Tuesday to step up security at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi after a bomb blast at a Moscow airport killed 35 people and wounded scores.
"We have some major events upcoming," ITAR-TASS quoted Medvedev as saying during talks with the heads of the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
"But those who would like to attend (these events) are not the only ones preparing for them. The criminals, the bandits, the terrorist rabble — they are preparing for them too."
The Russian president then ordered the FSB "to devote the maximum attention to the anti-terrorist protection of the 2012 APEC summit in Vladivostok, the 2013 Kazan World Student Games, and the 2014 Sochi Olympics."
Medvedev also identified this year’s parliamentary and the 2012 presidential elections as another potential flash point.
"The elections are coming up — this is also a very important event for our country."
Russian investigators have linked Monday’s attack — the second to strike Moscow in less than a year — to a suicide bomber from the country’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region.
A security source told the state-run RIA Novosti that the bomber may have been a woman, although initial reports had said it was a man in his 30s.
