Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed the need to “destroy and incapacitate terrorists wherever they are found,” following a terrorist attack in the French city of Nice on Thursday evening.
A truck drove at speeds of 60-70 kilometers per hour into crowds of people celebrating France’s Bastille Day on Nice’s waterfront, leaving at least 84 dead, including one Russian citizen, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. French President Francois Hollande has ruled to extend a state of national emergency by three months.
Putin said to Hollande that Russia was ready to work closely with France and other international partners to counter terrorism in all its forms, stressing the need to “systematically destroy the infrastructure of organized terrorism and cut off their financial support.”
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in a statement on Facebook restated terrorism’s borderless nature and the need for a tough collective response.
“We must make every effort to fight terrorism. Force is all that terrorists and their sponsors understand and that is what we must use,” he said.
Russia’s Foreign Minister SergeI Lavrov, opening a meeting in Moscow with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said that the Nice attack reiterated the need for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
“This disgusting attack in Nice confirms the urgency of our work to fight terrorism,” Lavrov said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, also in a statement on Facebook, said that “real and not hybrid terrorist threats” had to be fought, while also reiterating the need for a collective response.
“It’s time to iron out our differences before and not after further attacks,” she said.
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