‘Plot to assassinate Vladimir Putin foiled’

Russia’s pro-government Channel One television station said two men arrested belonged to a group seeking an Islamist state in Russia’s North Caucasus. A computer that was seized was said to contain numerous video files showing Mr Putin’s motorcade, usually heavily guarded, moving about Moscow.

“Our final goal was to go to Moscow and attempt to assassinate Putin,” a bruised man described as one of the plotters said in a police interview transmitted on Channel One. “Our deadline was after the election of the president of Russia.”

Opinion polls show Mr Putin will win the election and reclaim the post he held from 2000 to 2008. But he faces a growing opposition protest movement and wants to secure outright victory on Sunday, averting a run-off that might dent his authority.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s security agency SBU said a man was detained in the Black Sea port of Odessa on 4 January after an explosion at an apartment that killed an accomplice. Another suspect, on the international wanted list, fled.

“We found him in an apartment and detained him without a single shot being fired on 4 February,” SBU spokeswoman Marina Ostapenko said.

“I can officially confirm that they were preparing an [assassination] attempt on Putin.”

The current government of Ukraine is pro-Moscow and is seeking to turn the heat down in yet another gas disagreement with its neighbour.

Viktoria Bogomolova, a spokeswoman for the FSO, an agency in charge of guarding Russian officials, confirmed the agency had worked with the SBU to identify the alleged attackers.

Channel One said one of the alleged would-be assassins, who had previously lived in London, had shown them a store of explosives close to one of Moscow’s main roads used by Mr Putin to go to his government residence.

The channel attributed the assassination plot to a group known as the Caucasus Emirate, led by Chechen warlord Doku Umarov – its previous attacks include a suicide bombing at Russia’s busiest airport last year, which killed 37 people.

Ms Bogomolova said it would be premature to discuss taking any additional security measures following the incident.

Separatists in North Caucasus have said they target Mr Putin, Russia’s dominant leader for the past 12 years and the man they hold responsible for a military crackdown on their movement.

However, a Chechen rebel website, KavkazCentre, shrugged off the report about the assassination plot as “election propaganda nonsense”. The website noted that the explosion in Odessa was initially reported to have been caused by a gas leak and then said the men were preparing the explosives for a contract hit on a local businessman.

Russia’s opposition leaders reacted with scepticism, suggesting that the timing of the announcement was intended to attract sympathy for Mr Putin before Sunday’s election and underlined his weakness.

Gennady Gudkov of A Just Russia said: “There is always information about preparations or attempted terrorist attacks. But what does it really mean that [news of] this assassination attempt appears today? The timing was certainly political.”

Another opposition leader, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said that “assassination attempts are the favourite tactic of dictators”.

The nationalist party leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said the plot was invented by spin doctors and designed to appeal to “poorly educated old ladies”.

Allegations of widespread fraud in a parliamentary election on 4 December have angered many liberals and nationalists, and some Russians are alarmed that Mr Putin could rule Russia for another 12 years if he wins two more terms.

Russia has a long history of assassinations. Tsar Alexander II was killed by a bomb in 1881 and prime minister Pyotr Stolypin was shot in 1911. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was shot at in 1969, and Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin survived several attempts to kill him. An attempt on president Boris Yeltsin’s life was reported in 1993.

‘Plot to assassinate Vladimir Putin foiled’ - Russian state media