Police, the FSB, the border service and military personnel completed the first stage of the interdepartmental Operation Mak-2026, an anti-drug campaign, in Primorsky Krai.[1] Officers documented 89 drug offences and brought 109 people to responsibility, with 34 illegal-cultivation cases leading to criminal cases.[1] The account of the raids was attributed to the press service of the Interior Ministry directorate for Primorsky Krai, Russia’s regional police authority.[2]

The operation seized or destroyed almost 28,000 drug-containing plants, including 27,778 cannabis bushes and 272 opium poppy bushes.[1] The largest illegal plantings, more than 23,500 cannabis bushes, were found on private plots in the settlements of Kiparisovo and Davydovka in Nadezhdinsky district, and criminal cases on illegal cultivation of drug-containing plants were opened over them.[2] Police also eliminated 35 foci of wild cannabis covering more than 18 hectares.[2] The largest wild sites were five foci covering 13 hectares in Khankaysky district and three plots of almost 10,000 square metres in Khorolsky district.[2]

In several districts officers used herbicides sprayed from drones to destroy cannabis thickets, with similar foci also cleared in Spassky urban district and Oktyabrsky, Pogranichny and Mikhailovsky districts.[2] Police reported more than 11 kg of plant-based drugs removed from illegal circulation and more than eight tonnes of drug-containing vegetation destroyed, mixed cannabis-and-poppy totals that are not counted as cannabis-only figures.[2] Police said work to identify drug crimes and illegal plantings in the region was continuing.[2]