MOSCOW — The head of a US congressional delegation said Sunday that its meetings in Russia showed there was “nothing specific” that could have helped prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, but that the two countries need to work more closely on joint security threats. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who led the six-member delegation, described discussions with Russian parliament members and security officials as productive. Some of the meetings, he said, were made possible by actor Steven Seagal. Seagal, who attended the news conference in the US Embassy, is well connected in Russia. He met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, and last week paid a visit to Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman who rules Chechnya, a province in southern Russia that has seen two brutal wars between federal troops and Chechen separatists since 1994. Those wars spawned an insurgency that spread across the region, including to neighboring Dagestan, now the center of the violence. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is accused of carrying out the Boston bombings with his younger brother, spent six months in Dagestan last year. Investigators have been trying to determine whether he had contacts with the militants there. Rohrabacher said a higher level of cooperation between the US and Russia is necessary to keep people safe in both countries. The congressman repeatedly thanked Seagal and said it helped avoid the experience of past foreign trips when all of the meetings had been arranged by the US Embassy. — AP
