A senior Russian official is now claiming that if the FBI had followed through on intelligence reports provided by Russia, the Boston Marathon bombings could have been avoided.
Russian Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko, the longtime governer of St. Petersburg, is considered a close confidante of the Kremlin and was voted Russia's most powerful woman this year by Ekho Moskvy radio, according to ABC News.
Matviyenko met with Britain's ambassador to Russia on Tuesday and while speaking about the marathon bombings, claimed "the Russian side warned the American side about the Tsarnaev brothers, but this information was not taken seriously by the American side, which is what led to that tragedy."
Previously, officials had been convinced of Russian President Vladimir Putin's assertions that his country had no information that could have halted the attacks.
According to U.S. Representative William Keating (D-Mass.), security officials told a Congressional delegation to Russian last week that they were under the impression that if Russia and the United States had worked together more closely on intelligence gathering, the bombings wouldn't have occurred.
"Had we had the same level of communication as we do now, the Boston bombings may never have happened," a top Russian counter-intelligence official told the delegation, the Independent reports.
According to the Moscow Times, in 2011 Russia informed the FBI that suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev had plans to join insurgents in Chechnya. The FBI took that intel and conducted a precursory investigation. Apparently having found no credibility in the information and no marked level of importance regarding Tsarnaev through their investigation, the case was closed shortly thereafter.
"Today the world has to deal with common global challenges and international terrorism, as well as crime, and the co-operation of intelligence services becomes extremely significant for this issue," Matviyenko said on Tuesday.
According to a report from the Associated Press, American officials are unsure whether or not Russia actually had enough information on the Tsarnaev brothers to prevent the massacre in Boston. In defense of American intelligence and the FBI, U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) recently accused Russian officials of being unaware that Tamerlan Tsarnaev went to Dagestan, a Caucasus province plagued by insurgency for six months last year before returning to Russia.