Russia's FSB secret service said Wednesday it had prevented a number of women from boarding flights to Turkey where they planned to meet up with suspected "terrorists" they had fallen in love with online.
On several occasions, agents from the Federal Security Service approached women, aged 18 to 30, at St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport to tell them the men they had met on social media were in fact "suspected members of terrorist organizations," the FSB's branch in the city said in a statement.
Each time, the women then decided of their own volition not to board their flights to Istanbul, it added, without specifying how many women were involved.
They were "in love with these men" who had paid for their tickets and who "had not given any indication they belonged to terrorist groups," the statement said.
The FSB operations took place from September to December.
In June, a 19-year-old Russian student was detained by Turkish authorities when she tried to enter Syria. She was placed in pre-trial detention in Russia in October.
According to FSB figures released on Tuesday, nearly 2,900 Russians are fighting or have fought with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
At the request of the Damascus regime, Russia began carrying out airstrikes in Syria in late September.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that its intervention was partly because Moscow wanted to prevent "terrorists from coming to us."
AFP contributed to this report.