Zubeidat Tsarnaeva maintains sons' innocence, while Vladimir Putin criticises west over attitude to terror in Russia
The mother of two men suspected of the Boston marathon bombings has said she regrets emigrating to the United States, while continuing to insist that her sons are innocent.
"You know, my kids would be with us, and we would be fine," Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the Associated Press. "So, yes, I would prefer not to live in America now! Why did I even go there? Why? I thought America is going to protect us, our kids, it's going to be safe."
Tsarnaeva has passionately defended her two sons, Tamerlan, 26, killed during a massive manhunt last week, and Dzhokhar, 19, who has been charged with using weapons of mass destruction and is in hospital recovering from wounds suffered in the chase.
She said she had not yet decided whether to accompany her husband, Anzor, as he travels to the US in coming days to attempt to help their injured son and bring their elder son's body to Russia for burial.
Tsarnaeva was charged with shoplifting more than $1000 worth of clothes last summer, but says she has been assured by her lawyers that she would not be arrested upon arrival.
Tsernaeva was speaking from Makhachkala, the capital of Russia's troubled Caucasus republic of Dagestan. The family, whose roots lie in neighbouring Chechnya, spent five months in the republic en route to the United States from Kyrgyzstan in 2001-02. Tamerlan Tsernaev returned to Dagestan for six months in 2012, and US investigators have been attempting to discern whether he made contact with the republic's Islamist rebels.
FBI agents from the US embassy in Moscow questioned the brothers' parents at the headquarters of the Federal Security Service on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Dagestan has been in the grip of an Islamist insurgency for a decade, in part resulting from spillover from neighbouring Chechnya, which has been largely pacified following two brutal separatist wars fought in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. It is also fed by widespread human rights abuses and corruption, and is part of a larger movement seeking to create an Islamic caliphate along Russia's southern, mainly Muslim, flank.
Sniper attacks, roadside bombs and suicide bombings are regular occurrences. Rebels have also attacked the Russian heartland, last in 2011 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Moscow's Domodedovo airport, killing 37 people.
Speaking during a televised question and answer session on Thursday, Vladimir Putin criticised the west for failing to understand Russia's struggle with terrorism and called for cooperation in battling the threat.
"Russia itself is a victim of international terrorism – in fact, one of the first," Putin said. "I always resented when our western partners, and your colleagues from the western media, called our terrorists, who committed brutal, bloody, disgusting crimes on our country's territory, 'rebels' and almost never 'terrorists'."
"They gave them help, informational, financial and political support – sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly," he said. "And we always said that we do not need declarations about this common threat, but actions, to cooperate together more closely. These two criminals have shown the validity of our thesis in the best way."
Russia warned the US about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's suspected extremism in 2011 and requested further information about him six months later, even after an FBI review turned up nothing. The US subsequently put Tsarnaev on two terrorist watchlists.
It remains unclear why Russia allowed him to enter the country, and travel to violent Dagestan, one year later. Putin said the Tsarnaevs' roots played no role.
"This is absolutely not about nationality and not about faith, we've said this 1,000 times – it's about the extremist attitudes of these people," he said.
"I call for this tragedy pushing us together in relieving common threats, one of the most important and dangerous of which is terrorism," Putin said. "If we really will join forces, we will not allow such attacks and bear such losses."