MOSCOW. Oct 28 (Interfax) - The Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained 124 arms traffickers in 39 Russian constituent territories and has shut down 59 illegal workshops modifying weapons.
"The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, working together with the Russian Interior Ministry and the Russian National Guard, has put an end to the illegal activity of 124 residents of 39 constituent territories trafficking weapons, restoring combat properties of civilian weapons at illegal workshops, and selling those weapons," the FSB public relations center said on Monday.
Fifty-nine illegal workshops upgrading weapons and producing ammunition were shut down, the FSB said.
"As a result, 333 domestic and foreign firearms (including machineguns, automatic weapons, submachine guns, pistols, revolvers, rifles, carbines, shotguns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers and mortars), over 290 kilograms of explosives (gunpowder, TNT), 123 electric detonators, and over 633,000 rounds of various calibers were seized from the illegal circulation," it said.
The operation was held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, the Donetsk People's Republic, and the republics of Altai, Buryatia, Ingushetia, Crimea, Sakha (Yakutia), North Ossetia - Alania, and Tatarstan in August-September 2024.
Proceedings were also conducted in the Transbaikal, Primorye, Perm and Stavropol territories, and the Amur, Belgorod, Bryansk, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Zaporozhye, Irkutsk, Kaluga, Kemerovo, Kurgan, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Penza, Pskov, Ryazan, Sakhalin, Smolensk, Tver, Tomsk, Tula, Ulyanovsk and Chelyabinsk regions.