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Russia may be facing the most dangerous Christmas and New Year season of President Vladimir Putin’s rule as security chiefs issue the starkest terror warning in memory, according to Aman Tuleyev, the country’s second-longest serving governor.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, sent notice to regional leaders that terrorists have entered Russia and are planning attacks during the holiday season, Tuleyev, who’s been governor of Siberia’s Kemerovo mining region since 1997, said on Tuesday at a meeting with local government and law enforcement officials.

“This is the first time I’ve received such a detailed, concrete and worrying telegram” from Alexander Bortnikov, the FSB chief who heads Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee, during the New Year and Christmas period, Tuleyev said in a video posted on YouTube.

Russia has stepped up security after Putin blamed terrorists for the October crash of a tourist jet bound for St. Petersburg in Egypt’s Sinai that killed 224 on board, and gunmen massacred 130 people in Paris last month. Islamic State claimed it carried out both attacks. Putin, who came to power when President Boris Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve in 1999, has lobbied for a global anti-terror coalition, a step toward improving ties with the U.S. and Europe, as Russia’s military carries out airstrikes against Islamic State and other insurgent groups in Syria.

Alert Level

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee in Moscow played down the threat, saying a warning is sent routinely to governors before public holidays. The first eight days of 2016 are public holidays in Russia as the country celebrates the New Year and Orthodox Christmas.

“The official alert level of the terrorist threat has not been raised,” Andrei Przhezdomsky, a committee representative, said by phone.

Russia is trying to halt the spread of terrorist groups within the country, particularly in the mostly Muslim North Caucasus regions that have experienced decades of militant activity since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin has justified the Syrian military campaign in part by saying that 5,000 to 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet states are fighting with Islamic State and “can’t be allowed to apply later on at home the experience they are gaining today in Syria.”

According to Bortnikov, 20 out of 26 militant leaders in Russia who’ve sworn an oath to Islamic State have been killed.

Russians may be underestimating the risk because of “a mindset that we can’t get rid of, that Syria” is far away and that “it won’t ever affect you and your children,” Tuleyev, 71, said on the video. Kemerovo is 4,142 kilometers (2,574 miles) from Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold in Raqqa.

“That’s the worst misconception for us. The worst,” he said. “And we say, well, banish this from your subconscious, banish it!”