On May 13, 2019 Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Sri Lanka to the Russian Federation H. E. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka met with H. E. Oleg Syromolotov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, General of the Army, who oversees counter-terrorism matters.
The meeting was devoted to discussing issues of domestic and international terrorism. H. E. Oleg Syromolotov expressed his condolences for those, who had died and been injured as a result of a series of bomb explosions in Sri Lanka on April 21, 2019, and strongly condemned the terrorist acts.
H.E. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, in his turn, underscored the efficiency, with which the Russian Federation had combated terrorism in the past, and the strong expertise and authority it had in this field based on its recent successes in the international arena as well as domestically, during major events in Russia, such as the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the FIFA World Cup in Moscow, where there was not a single incident.
Deputy Foreign Minister Syromolotov and Ambassador Jayatilleka also discussed the origins and trajectory of Wahhabist terrorism and Russia’s experience of its international dimensions and complex ramifications. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, sharing Russia’s negative experience of the spread of Wahhabism through the penetration of NGOs into the North Caucasus in the 1990s, drew attention to certain concepts and doctrines, which are sought to be introduced, which give more “rights” to the terrorists rather than the victims of terrorism, and thereby impede the success of counter-terrorism.
Before assuming the office of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2015, H. E. Oleg Syromolotov had served in operational and higher command positions in State security authorities of the USSR (later – Russian Federation) and spent almost two decades at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), having joined as the Head of the FSB Directorate for Counter-Intelligence in Transport and then risen to the position of the Head of the FSB Counter-Intelligence Service (2004-2015).
