CIA’s tip draws Putin’s thanks
Attack foiled, he tells Trump
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday phoned President Donald Trump to thank him for a tip from the CIA that thwarted a terrorist attack being planned in St. Petersburg.
The unusual call — countries share intelligence all the time, but presidents rarely publicly thank one another for it — was confirmed by White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Putin told Trump that the information provided by the CIA allowed Russian law enforcement agencies to track down and detain a group of suspects who were planning to bomb the centrally located Kazan Cathedral and other crowded parts of Russia’s second-largest city.
“Based on the information the United States provided, Russian authorities were able to capture the terrorists just prior to an attack that could have killed large numbers of people,” the White House said in its readout of the call.
“President Trump appreciated the call and told President Putin that he and the entire United States intelligence community were pleased to have helped save so many lives,” the White House said in its statement. “President Trump stressed the importance of intelligence cooperation to defeat terrorists wherever they may be. Both leaders agreed that this serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when our countries work together.”
It was the two presidents’ second conversation since Thursday, when they spoke after Putin’s annual four-hour televised news
conference, during which the Russian leader mentioned the booming U.S. stock market as an example of Trump’s successes. The White House said Trump thanked Putin for remarks he made “acknowledging America’s strong economic performance.”
The CIA’s tip to Russia comes even as Russia-U.S. ties have plunged to their lowest level since the Cold War era — first over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine, more recently over allegations that Moscow interfered in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump.
The Kremlin announcement offered no details on what information the CIA had forwarded to the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the KGB. U.S. intelligence agencies typically view the Russian agency as an adversary, even while cooperating in counterterrorism operations.
While Russian officials have said the two countries were continuing to exchange some terror-related intelligence, Sunday’s statement from the Kremlin was Russia’s first public assertion that information from the United States helped prevent an attack.
The CIA tip apparently provided the breakthrough that allowed Russian authorities last week to detain seven members of what officials identified as Islamic State cells. The suspects, investigators said, had been planning a suicide bombing this weekend in Kazan Cathedral, a St. Petersburg landmark located on Nevsky Prospect, its main thoroughfare. The cathedral was built between 1801 and
1811, and, controversially at the time, was designed along the lines of a Roman Catholic basilica.
Russian state television reported the capture of the alleged cell members as it often does in takedowns of terrorist suspects, with a video that shows agents in action and an on-camera confession.
“My job was to make explosives, put it in bottles and attach pieces of shrapnel,” a suspect, identified by Russian media as 18-year old Yevgeny Yefimov, said in the footage released by the security agency.
Several other suspects came from mostly Muslim regions in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus, and one man was from the ex-Soviet nation of Tajikistan that borders Afghanistan.
Yefimov confessed that he planned to carry out an attack in the city. Later, he told a St. Petersburg court that he was planning to target the Kazan Cathedral. Three more people were arrested Sunday in connection with the alleged plot, RIA Novosti reported.
Russian TV stations have aired footage daily since Friday of the suspects in the foiled attacks being apprehended and questioned.
The TV reports included footage of a metal container, which the suspects used as a laboratory for making explosives, according to the Federal Security Service. Another video showed operatives breaking the doors and raiding an apartment used by other suspects.
Last week, the security agency said it also arrested several Islamic State-linked suspects in Moscow, where they were alleged to be plotting a series of suicide bombings to coincide with New Year’s celebrations.
The agency published a list of 17 major terrorist plots that Russian law enforcement
has been able to head off this year.
The suspects in the latest arrests had been using the messaging app Telegram to communicate with Islamic State leaders abroad, according to law enforcement agencies. Telegram was fined last month for refusing to provide Russian security forces access to the online conversations of two suspects linked to a suicide bombing in April that killed 16 people and injured about 100.
In their phone conversation Sunday, Putin asked Trump to pass along his gratitude to CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the American intelligence agents who received the information, the Kremlin said. It said Putin also told Trump that “if Russian special services obtain any information on terrorist threats against the United States and its citizens, they will definitely and immediately pass it to American counterparts through partner channels.”
The CIA declined to comment on that.
But the White House said that Trump “then called Director Pompeo to congratulate him, his very talented people, and the entire intelligence community on a job well done!”
Alexei Chepa, a deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russia’s parliament, hailed the CIA tip as a “step toward cooperation.”
“The more such actions we have, the better it will be for both our countries,” Chepa told the state RIA Novosti news agency.