Russia doubts the credibility of a report by a US-based research company that 3,500 Russians are fighting for the Islamic State, the Kremlin said on Thursday.
“First, we do not quite understand to what extent we can trust the cited data, what it is based on… what information sources that organization has… We tend to doubt the credibility of that information,” Sputnik news agency quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying.
Those who have joined terrorists and were fighting against Russian servicemen “are criminals doomed to be destroyed”, Peskov added.
The report, released on Tuesday by the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy, claimed that Russia was the largest source of foreign militants in the IS in Syria and Iraq, with nearly 3,500 militants from Russia alone.