Putin: Terrorists common threat to all nations

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MOSCOW, April 25 (UPI) -- The twin blasts at the Boston Marathon confirmed Russia's view that terrorists represent a common threat to all nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

Putin spoke Thursday about the April 15 bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 270 people during his annual question-and-answer session in Moscow, addressing comments that blamed Russia, where the bombings suspects were born, for the incident, RT reported.

The U.S. writers "don't understand what is happening," Putin said. "Here I am addressing them and our citizens to say that Russia is a victim of international terrorism, too."

Putin said the bombings should prompt Russia and the United States to cooperate more closely when dealing with such threats, RIA Novosti reported.

"I ... call for this tragedy to be an incentive for us to become closer in tackling common threats, with terrorism being one of the most important and dangerous of them. If indeed we combine our efforts, we won't take such hits and sustain such losses," he said.

The Russian president said he resents when terrorists who committed "savage, bloody, appalling crimes on Russian territory were referred to in no other way but rebels, and were seldom or never called 'terrorists'" by foreign media and politicians.

"They [the terrorists] were receiving help, informational, financial and political support; sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly," Putin said. "And we were saying that we must do the job and not be content with declarations proclaiming terrorism a common threat. Those two have proved our position all too well."

An FBI investigation alleged that the Boston Marathan perpetrators were ethnic Chechens: brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a shootout with police, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was captured after a massive manhunt in the Boston area.