MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. US secret services, just as Russian ones, "work globally" and help Moscow in its struggle against terrorism, Russian President Vladimir Putin told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".

He recalled that on a tip-off from the United States two followers of the terrorist group Islamic State (outlawed in Russia) had been detained in St. Petersburg at the end of 2019. Putin said US secret services "had been looking into them for a long time."

"After that, the FBI provided this information to the Federal Security Service," Putin said. "They were the ones who tracked this case down," Putin said, adding that he later called Trump to thank the US for giving Russia the information. He also said that Russian special services had no related evidence at their disposal. "We [Russia and the US] do cooperate on counter-terrorism."

He spoke highly of the job done by the US special services: "They work globally, just as we do."

About anti-terrorist efforts by Russian specialists Putin said: "Our services track down a lot of them, thus preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, they catch and intercept them."

Successes in anti-terrorist crusade

In his statement at the board meeting of the Russian federal security service FSB in February 2020 Putin noted a decline in the number of terrorism-related crimes from nine in 2018 to four in 2019. Last year 57 such attacks were prevented in contrast to 36 a year earlier.

At the same meeting he thanked the US for the information it shared about Islamic State supporters in St. Petersburg and promised that Moscow would reciprocate by providing assistance to Washington in the struggle against terror.

Episode 11 of the video interview is available at https://putin.tass.ru/en.