Russia Seeks to Block Web Access to IS Video Threatening Terror Acts

Russian authorities are seeking to block Internet access to a video in which Islamic State (IS) supporters threaten to unleash a ‘liberation’ war in North Caucasus.

“In connection with a video address by supporters of the Islamic State terrorist group to the Russian President containing threats of terrorist acts and a ‘liberation’ war in the North Caucasus, shown by Al Arabiya TV and posted on the Internet, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has ordered to send the materials to the Investigation Department of the Federal Security Service for the opening of a criminal case,” ITAR-TASS quoted prosecutors’office spokeswoman Marina Gridneva as saying on Wednesday.

The Prosecutor’s Office has also asked Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor to restrict access to the websites on which the video address was posted.

The video, believed to have been filmed at Tabqa airbase in the Syrian province of Raqqa captured from Syrian government forces, features a militant seated in a MiG-21 jet, saying: "This message is for you, Vladimir Putin! These are the aircraft you sent to Bashar [Assad], and we're going to send them to you."

The footage was released a day after a video showing the purported beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff held hostage by Islamic State militants was posted online.

While the IS has declared war on the United States for its air strikes against the group's fighters in northern Iraq, Russia has drawn its ire for supporting and supplying arms to the regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad.

Russia's security services believe hundreds of militants from the restive Caucasus region have fled to the Middle East to fight alongside Islamic State militants.

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