Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday that Russia was facing an invisible enemy in the face of Chechen rebels and urged the country to look out for future attacks in a rare admission the five year war was not going according to plan.
"We are facing a very serious force - they are well organised ... and are receiving strong financial help" from abroad, Ivanov told NTV television in a pre-recorded interview.
One of the closest allies of President Vladimir Putin - and a former KGB agent who followed in the secret service footsteps of the Kremlin chief, Ivanov admitted in rare candid remarks that Russians must realise that they are in a state of war.
Echoing other top officials, Ivanov said Russia was coming under attack from what he alleged were international terror networks and that people must take precaution as they go about their daily business.
He offered no direct path to safety, but his comments underlined the difficulties Russia faced in a guerrilla war that has now reached a new stage, with attacks against civilians killing over 400 people, including some 150 children, in the past month.
Most died in a school in Beslan, near Chechnya, and two nearly simultaneous explosions on board Russian jets headed from Moscow to Russia's south that officials link to Chechen female suicide bombers. "Our society is not yet ready to deal with such attacks," said Ivanov.
Speaking to an NTV reporter while sipping orange juice at a table laden with fruit, Ivanov said that "we need to change the peoples' perspective" to prepare them for other possible strikes on Russian targets linked to the conflict.
But Ivanov also pressed the Kremlin line, saying the rebels were fighting because they were getting paid from abroad by international terror networks, a battle that had nothing to do with the region's claim for independence from Moscow.
He said the rebels were not driven by a political or religious ideology, nor striking back in revenge at the deaths and kidnappings of civilians at the hands of Russian troops in the war. Guerrillas cite this as the main cause in their attacks.