Putin thanks U.S., CIA for bombing tip

MOSCOW— Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned U.S. President Donald Trump Sunday to thank him for a CIA tip that helped thwart a series of bombings in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin said.

During the call, the two leaders’ second in three days, Putin expressed gratitude for the CIA information. The Kremlin said it allowed Russia’s top domestic security agency to track down a group of suspects that planned to bomb Kazan Cathedral and other crowded sites this weekend. “The information received from the CIA proved sufficient to find and detain the criminal suspects,” the Kremlin said.

It added that Putin asked Trump to convey gratitude to the CIA and assured him that “if the Russian intelligence agencies receive information about potential terror threats against the United States and its citizens, they will immediately hand it over to their U.S. counterparts via their communications channels.”

While Russian officials have said the two countries were continuing to exchange a terror-related intelligence, Sunday’s statement from the Kremlin was Russia’s first public assertion that information from the U.S. helped prevent an attack. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, announced Friday that seven suspected followers of Daesh had been arrested for allegedly planning to carry out terror attacks in St. Petersburg this weekend. It said a search of a St. Petersburg apartment found explosives, automatic weapons and extremist literature.

Russian news reports said Kazan Cathedral, a landmark 19th-century Orthodox church on St. Petersburg’s central Nevsky Prospect, was the prime target. If the suspects succeeded in bombing the cathedral, it would have been the first major attack on a Russian Orthodox Church by Islamist terrorists, who have blown up apartment buildings, planes and transport facilities.