Opponents describe the news of the allegedly foiled Odessa plot as overplayed, but the Kremlin calls the claims blasphemous
The Kremlin has been accused of playing up a purported assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin to boost his popularity ahead of Russia's upcoming presidential election.
"This is part of a clear election campaign," said Yevgeniya Chirikova, a leader of the protest movement that has brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets of Moscow calling on Putin to quit. "It's to bring attention to Vladimir Putin, and to develop this idea that there's a threat everywhere. It's a spectacle."
Putin's press secretary described such statements as "blasphemous".
State-run Channel One television reported that two men arrested by Russian and Ukrainian special forces in the Ukrainian port of Odessa earlier this year had been dispatched to kill Putin by Chechen rebel Doku Umarov, the leader of Russia's separatist Islamist movement.
One of the men, identified as Ilya Pyanzin, was detained after an explosion in the Odessa apartment he was renting with another man, who was reportedly killed in the blast. The television channel broadcast footage in which Pyanzin repeated what he claimed were the instructions he had been given. He said: "In Moscow you will sabotage economic sites. Further – an attempt on Putin."
Channel One also broadcast footage of the detention of a third man, identified as Adam Osmayev, a Chechen who was said to be living in London. The report said he had studied economics at London's Buckingham College and turned to terrorism after meeting Chechen rebel exiles in the capital.
His face crusted with blood and a green ointment popular in the former Soviet Union for the treatment of wounds, Osmayev told an interviewer: "The final goal was to go to Moscow and carry out an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Putin. The man who died was ready to become a suicide bomber."
He said they hoped to avoid that option, planning instead to plant mines along a road often used by the prime minister. The two men in the flat when it exploded were due to leave for Moscow in two days, he said. The report also showed surveillance footage of Putin allegedly used by the men.
News reports in liberal Russian online media suggested Osmayev was on a list of so-called "political prisoners" compiled by the opposition. The release of such prisoners is one of the protesters' demands.
Channel One said it received information about the assassination attempt 10 days ago but did not explain why it did not release the news sooner. The report, aired just a week ahead of an election that is expected to sweep Putin back into the Kremlin despite growing protests against his rule, was treated with suspicion in liberal circles in Moscow.
"Do I understand correctly that no one believes in the assassination attempt on Putin?" Danila Lindele, a leader of the opposition Blue Bucket movement, wrote on Twitter.
Another Russian user wrote: "It's better to pretend we believe it. Or else they'll start blowing up homes again."
Putin's critics allege that a series of apartment block bombings on the eve of his first election in 2000 were orchestrated by the Kremlin to boost the then unknown politician's popularity, rather than by Chechen rebels, as claimed.
A similar assassination attempt on Putin was allegedly foiled on the day of Russia's last presidential election in March 2008.
But Channel One's press service said that those who linked the report to Putin's election campaign were "psychologically unwell".
Putin's press secretary denied the release of the report was linked to the upcoming vote. "Given the seriousness of the imminent attack on Vladimir Putin, and given that really a serious risk was confirmed during the preliminary investigation, making such statements is, at minimum, blasphemous," Dmitry Peskov told online news portal Gazeta.ru.