MOSCOW---Russia?s main television channel reported Monday that authorities in the Ukraine had foiled a plan to assassinate Vladimir V. Putin just after next Sunday?s presidential election.
News footage showed two Chechen men, held in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, who reportedly confessed to the plot against Putin in early February after undergoing weeks of questioning. One of the men was shown kneeling on the floor, his face and hands bloodied. Another clip shows him with one hand covered in bandages, his face blotchy with green antiseptic.
The report said the men lived in an apartment in Odessa where an explosion on Jan. 4 triggered a police investigation. The probe into the blast yielded evidence of attempts to build a bomb. A third suspect was killed in the explosion, the report said.
The men had been ordered by Chechen warlord Doku Umarov to carry out the attack on Putin, according to the news report. One suspect-- identified as Ilya Pyanzin, 28--said he had traveled to Ukraine from the United Arab Emirates by way of Turkey.
?They told us we should go to Odessa to begin with, learn how to make bombs,? Pyanzin says on video footage that was included in the news report, apparently speaking to an investigator. ?There would be an attempt on Putin?s life.?
Typing can be heard in the background.
The broadcast shows Ukrainian special police storming a building where another man is found crouching on the floor. He was identified as Adam Osmayev, whose face was covered with blood.
?The ultimate goal was to arrive in Moscow and make an attempt on the life of Prime Minister Putin,? Osmayev said in the video. Osmayev, 31, reportedly met the other two accused conspirators in Odessa, where he provided them with details of the plot.
Pyanzin said that Umarov hired him and Ruslan Madayev, the 26-year-old man who died in the explosion, to kill Putin. He said they planned to set off a bomb on Kutuzovsky Prospect, the wide avenue along which Putin frequently drives when traveling from his home to government offices.
Images were shown of Putin?s entourage traveling along Kutuzovsky. The television report said the footage was found on Pyanzin?s laptop.
Putin?s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the accuracy of the report to Russia?s Interfax News Agency, without providing any details. But Putin critics expressed some skepticism. Channel One Television promised viewers it would provide more details Monday evening.
Putin, 59, who is expected to win the presidential election handily, has a long history of confrontation with Chechnya, a rebellious Islamic region of southern Russia that tried to break away from Russia in the 1990s. Although has been mostly pacified under the rule of strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, the region has still been the source of terrorist attacks against Moscow in recent years.
The last attack was a bomb that killed 37 people at Domodedevo Airport on Jan. 24, 2011. A young Ingushetian man who died in the blast was identified as the suicide bomber, and Umarov has been accused of masterminding the attack.
About a dozen plots against Putin have been reported since 2000, with the last one just before the 2008 presidential election. At that time the targets were said to be Putin, who was leaving the presidency to take on the post of prime minister, and Dmitry Medvedev, who was about to be elected president.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=5129069d039f4be4291c07757098f09f
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