PLOT TO KILL PUTIN FOILED IN ODESSA

Russia has said it thwarted a plot by suspected Chechen militants to kill Vladimir Putin after this weekend’s presidential vote. State televisions reported on Tuesday 02/28/2012. The plot’s existence was confirmed by Mr Putin’s spokesman as well as the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and its Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) counterpart. But some analysts raised suspicion over the timing of the news less than a week before Mr Putin’s likely victory, on Sunday 03/04/2012 election..

The purported confessions showed two men confessing to conspiring to kill the Russian strongman in a bombing attack and saying they acted on the orders of Chechen Islamist militant Doku Umarov, the warlord who has claimed deadly airport and metro bombings in Moscow over the past two years (see – Moscow 03.29.10 + Domodedovo Blast).

Officials said the pair along with a third man, named Ruslan Madayev, 26, who died while trying to prepare a bomb soon after New Year’s Eve, on 01/04/2012, were probably ethnic Chechens who were detained in an apartment in Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa in January and early February 2012.

Russian Channel One said the three plotters went to Ukraine from the United Arab Emirates – UAE via Turkey with “clear instructions from representatives of Doku Umarov”.

“They told us that first you come to Odessa and learn how to make bombs,” Channel One showed a man identified as Ilya Pyanzin (L), 28, as saying. “And then later, in Moscow, you will stage attacks against commercial objects, with the subsequent assassination attempt against Putin,” Ilya Pyanzin , who is a Muslim Kazakh, said.

The state television footage showed a video of Mr Putin getting into his car being played on the laptop computer belonging to second suspect Adam Osmayev (R), 31,- a man the report said had lived for a long time in London. The hidden-camera footage of the Russian prime minister’s movements was shot “so that we had an understanding of how he was protected”, Adam Osmayev said.

“The end goal was to come to Moscow and to try to stage an assassination attempt against premier Putin,” Osmayev said. “The deadline was after the election of the Russian president.” The report said one of the two detained men had told Russian and Ukrainian investigators that some explosives had already been hidden near the Kutuzovsky Prospekt avenue tin Moscow that Mr Putin passes daily to reach the government White House.

It quoted an unidentified Russian FSB official as saying that the explosives would have created a “serious blast… powerful enough to tear apart a truck”.

The Russian Caucasus region remains wracked by violence to this day and Doku Umarov is still at large despite repeated attempts by Russian forces to kill him.

The alleged assassination attempt against Mr Putin is at least the sixth reported by the Russian media since he first became president 12 years ago. The last was reportedly planned for his 06/2007 visit to Istanbul for a regional summit (see – Putin risks 10.14.07).

 

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