MOSCOW, March 22. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency have been maintaining rather active dialogue, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said on Thursday.

"Dialogue has been rather active," he said in response to a TASS question. In this connection, Syromolotov mentioned recent contacts between senior officials of the two agencies.

He pointed out that in October 2017, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov had chaired a conference on counterterrorism, which involved senior officials from the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the CIA and the State Department.

"I can see that Michael Pompeo (former CIA chief nominated to head the Department of State) has a reasonable approach to things, while Rex Tillerson (former Secretary of State) did not fit in the team consisting of former military officers," Syromolotov said. "The FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] and the CIA have been maintaining regular contacts as you can see from dialogue on the St. Petersburg issue [in December 2017, the CIA provided Russia with information about a planned terrorist attack in St. Petersburg - TASS]. You can rest assured that if we have any information of this kind we will definitely pass it over to the United States," the senior Russian diplomat pointed out.

"I provided information about preparations for a terrorist attack in Boston a year before it took place [on April 15, 2013, a blast occurred during the Boston marathon, killing three and leaving 264 wounded - TASS] and reiterated the warning six months later, but the United States did not take it seriously," the Russian deputy foreign minister noted.