RIA Novosti reports that Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev said that in Syria and Iraq on the side of terrorists are fighting almost 2.7 thousand residents of the North Caucasus.

At an outreach meeting in Astrakhan, Patrushev stated: "According to available information, almost 2.7 thousand people live in the territory of Syria and Iraq as part of terrorist structures.

Identified 66 persons who carried out recruitment to illegal armed groups ".

He also added that this is facilitated by the "destructive activity of missionaries from the states of the Central Asian region preaching the ideology of radical Islam".

In March of this year, Acting Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Valery Semerikov reported that in Syria on the side of terrorists, about 2-2.5 thousand people from Russia are fighting or fighting.