Russia gets color-coded threat level

As of today, Russia has its own color-coded terrorist threat level indicator (the kind the US got rid of last month).

President Dmitry Medvedev signed into law changes to the country’s law that is poetically titled “On Opposition to Terrorism.” The changes were approved by the Duma on April 22.

So now, Russia will have three ratings: a raised threat level will be blue, a high threat level will be yellow and a critical threat level will be red.

I’m not sure this is the way to do it, but Russia needs some kind of a system alerting people to the threat of an attack (we’ve had two major ones in the past 14 months). After the attack on Domodedovo airport in January, security services sources came out of the woodwork to say they’d been on the lookout for potential attackers, particularly after one suspected suicide bomber blew herself up by mistake. Now, tabloids like LifeNews are constantly flooded with rumors of “terrorists on the loose” in Moscow.