Plot to assassinate Putin foiled

Russian and Ukrainian security services have apparently foiled a plot to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Two militants were detained in Ukraine for planning to murder the premier in Moscow after the March 4 presidential election, Russia’s state-run Channel One television said. One of the men was arrested last month in Odessa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast after arriving there from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey, Channel One said. The suspects were acting on the orders of Doku Umarov, a Chechen rebel leader who has claimed responsibility for orchestrating terror attacks in Russia before, the station said. Ukraine’s state security service alerted Russia on Jan. 6 after an explosion in a residential building in Odessa two days earlier led them to uncover the plot. One of the would-be assassins was killed and another injured in the blast, Channel One said. The station aired a video of one of the men confessing to planning the attack during an interrogation with unidentified agents. The second man described the plan to a Channel One reporter. They planned to use a suicide bomber or landmine to kill Putin, according to the report. Putin, 59, is seeking a return to the Kremlin amid the biggest challenge to his 12-year rule after fraud allegations at parliamentary polls in December sparked the largest mass protests against the government since the 1990s. Thousands of protesters wearing white ribbons yesterday joined hands in a bid to encircle central Moscow, including the Kremlin. The plan to kill Putin was the seventh against the Russian leader since he came to power in 2000, all of which were blamed on either Chechen militants or Al-Qaeda operatives, the state- run RIA Novosti news service reported Monday. The first plot was announced in February 2000, a month before Putin was elected president. Putin, as prime minister under then-President Boris Yeltsin, sent ground troops into Chechnya in 1999 to quell an uprising by militants seeking to establish an independent Islamic state in the mainly Muslim Northern Caucasus.