Meanwhile, electronic surveillance has also been kicked into high gear. The unique identities of mobile phones are logged as they enter and leave the metro system. Texts, messages and e-mails are intercepted and analyzed by programs looking for keywords, phrases or suspicious correlations. All these have been in place for some time — and are hardly unique to Russia — but reports suggest the net is especially fine and has been cast wide during the World Cup.
Of course, none of this can guarantee security, whether from a determined attacker or, as the taxi incident demonstrated, bad luck. Nonetheless, it does show how serious the Kremlin is about doing everything it can to ensure the tournament runs smoothly.
But this extraordinary level of effort cannot be sustained. Already, cities and regions which have been emptied of their police to secure the tournament are expressing concern about their own crime rates. Likewise, the FSB and other security agencies are working flat out and cannot maintain the same pace forever. Once the World Cup is over, we can expect to see a scaling down of the campaign.
For all that, though, there will be a legacy, and a mixed one for Russia. Extra spending on law enforcement and urban security measures will carry forward and be especially useful for venue cities such as Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd and Yekaterinburg, which have needed something of an assist.
However, if the more intrusive campaign of “prophylactic chats,” local confinement and unofficial intimidations are also deemed successful, the temptation will be to adopt them more generally. Russia may gain a better reputation abroad while losing even more of its freedoms at home.
Mark Galeotti is Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague and author of “The Vory: Russia’s super mafia.” The views and opinions expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.