Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the U.S. government's attitude toward counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russia sends “our American partners information, and frequently there's no reaction,” Putin said in an interview with the French television channel TF1. He blamed the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon on the U.S.'s decision to ignore Russia's warnings about one of the bombers.
“We sent the first document -- nothing. We sent the second and got an answer: 'That's none of your business. They're already US citizens. We'll deal with it ourselves,'” Putin said. “What was the result? A terrorist attack in the U.S.”
Russia still enjoys strong relations with other Western security services such as France's, Putin said. However, the Boston bombing underlines the need to increase cooperation between countries, he added.
The April 15, 2013 Boston bombing killed three people and left 260 injured. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, considered the mastermind of the attack, was killed during the citywide manhunt. In June 2016, his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was sentenced to death for his role in the bombing.
Tsarnaev came to Russia's Federal Security Service's (FSB) attention as early as March 2011, when the FSB warned the U.S. about his possible ties to Islamic terrorism. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations then interviewed Tsarnaev, concluding that he had no links to terrorism.
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