MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump and expressed his gratitude to the US leader and the CIA for providing information on terrorists who had been preparing attacks in the city of St. Petersburg.
"Currently we see only episodic occasional cases of a normal, effective work, and every situation that turns out to be a plus for our relations seems to be something extraordinary, unusual and this is also a sign of ill-being of our relationship. Although, for example, the issues that the presidents discussed yesterday … are an outstanding achievement in cooperation between the law enforcement agencies and special services," Ryabkov told reporters.
At the same time, Chairman of Russia's upper house Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said that the signals from the White House on improvements in US-Russian relations were encouraging.
The senior lawmaker stressed that the provision of the intelligence information to Russia by the United States was an evidence of improvements in Moscow-Washington relations.
On Friday, Russia's Federal Security Service said it had prevented the activities of Daesh terror group supporters in St. Petersburg, who planned to carry out a terrorist attack later in December. Several members of the cell were detained in St. Petersburg in a special operation on December 13-14.
