MOSCOW, April 9 – RAPSI. Russia’s state security chief on Tuesday criticized regional efforts to fight terrorism as “insufficient and often perfunctory.”

“According to the prosecutor’s office, the number of reported violations remains significant,” Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), told a meeting of the National Antiterrorism Committee.

The problem is due to a number of loopholes in the laws on the prevention of terrorism and extremism, he said, without elaborating.

“Terrorism” in official Russian politics is used loosely and in preference to more neutral terms such as “insurgency.”

Russia’s Islamist insurgency, once confined largely to the republic of Chechnya, has spread across the North Caucasus in recent years. Attacks on security forces, police and civilians are reported regularly in the neighboring republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Over a decade after the war against Islamist separatists in Chechnya ended, Russian security forces continue to fight militants in the volatile region.