International cooperation

Rachel Marsden: Russia and America should become permanent partners in fighting terrorism

Russian President Vladimir Putin called U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday to thank him for America’s help in saving Russian lives. And it’s not the first time.

In both instances, two years apart, U.S. intelligence services provided their Russian counterparts with information that thwarted holiday terror plots targeting civilians in Russia’s cultural mecca, St. Petersburg. Earlier, Russia had warned the U.S. about the danger posed by the Tsarnaevs, the Chechen brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings (though American officials didn’t act in time).

Russia is a target for the Islamic State, given its role in fighting the terrorist group in Syria and the sympathies for ISIS in the Russian republic of Chechnya. At his annual press conference just before Christmas, Putin noted that Russian natives account for the second-largest number of Islamic State fighters imprisoned in Syria.

It’s not hard to imagine what a terrorist attack in Moscow would look like. When I was Christmas-shopping in the giant Evropeyskiy Mall recently, the FSB federal security service and Russian police executed a counterterror operation in the building, rounding up five terror suspects.