Russia works to calm Olympics safety fears

Russia's prime minister tried to reassure the world about the safety of the upcoming Olympic Winter Games on Tuesday as security forces worked to clamp down on potential threats far from the Black Sea resort where the games will soon begin. A suspected militant leader died in a shootout with police in the restive Caucasus republic of Dagestan, hundreds of miles east of the Olympic venues in Sochi, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported. The news agency said Russian special forces were engaged in other operations in the same territory. And in Sochi and in Rostov-on-Don, a nine-hour drive to the north, police handed out posters of women they suspect may be planning terrorist attacks. In an interview set to air Wednesday on CNN's Amanpour program, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said "there are always some threats" to public events, "not only this country but also in others." But Russian authorities are aware of those threats and are planning accordingly, he said. "I am referring to the mobilization, build-up, of police forces, and a huge number of policemen will watch the progress of the Games," Medvedev said. Russia has been battling a low-level Islamist insurgency in Dagestan and the North Caucasus region for more than a decade, and militants have vowed to strike at the Games. Over the weekend, as President Vladimir Putin told reporters his government has a "perfect understanding" of the threat and how to stop it, a video posted online warned that the insurgents had "a present" for Olympic visitors. U.S. may share counter-IED tech with Russia Andrew Kutchins, the head of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Putin made a "brazen bet" by bidding for the Games in Sochi. "He sees one of the historic roles he has played as being to stabilize the North Caucasus. Unfortunately, the North Caucasus aren't as stabilized as he would like, and by holding the Sochi Olympics in such close proximity to, in effect, a conflict zone, he's taking a big risk. If things don't go well all of his claims about the stability he has brought to the North Caucasus -- and in a way, more broadly, to Russia -- are going to be diminished." Kutchins said it would be "very, very difficult" for militants to pull off large-scale attacks in Sochi, but he said they don't have to hit Sochi itself to hurt the Games. A series of attacks like the Vologograd bombings in the surrounding area "would raise the terror level in the country and in the international community to such a level that the Games themselves would be imperiled," he said. Amid the concerns, the top U.S. military officer discussed sharing high-tech equipment to counter improvised bombs with his Russian counterpart Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman told CNN. Ver Mas en: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/21/world/europe/sochi-security/index.html?c=intl-homepage-t