Putin thanks Trump for CIA intel that foiled a planned terrorist attack in Russia

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday phoned President Trump to thank him for a tip from the CIA that thwarted a terrorist attack being planned in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin said.

The unusual call — countries share intelligence all the time, but presidents rarely publicly thank one another about it — was confirmed by White House spokeswoman 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. 

Putin asked Trump to pass along his gratitude to the CIA 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. 

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.”

[Putin blames Trump’s political opponents for poor U.S.-Russian relations]

Putin said he doubted Trump would be able to improve relations between their two countries because the U.S. president was being held back by his political opposition and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election were being invented to raise doubts about Trump’s legitimacy. 

Russian investigators said last week that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, had detained seven members of what officials identified as Islamic State cells. The suspects 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. 

The suspects had been using the messaging app Telegram to communicate with Islamic State leaders abroad, according to law enforcement agencies.

A video that ran on the state news agency RIA Novosti showed a man identified as Yevgeny Yefimov confessing that he planned to carry out an attack in the city. Later, Yefimov 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.

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.

RIA Novosti published a list of 17 terrorist acts it said that Russian law enforcement had thwarted in 2017.

Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

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