Russian and Ukrainian intelligence services announced that they detained a group of bandits, who planned to explode Vladimir Putin’s cortege on Kutuzov Avenue. Newspapers write it was the third stopped assassination attempt on the prime minister, which coincides with the presidential election.
The pre-election week started with the news of the First Channel, which told about the detention of a group of bandits in Ukraine, who prepared for an assassination of Vladimir Putin, RBC daily writes. Press service of the television channel called “psychologically unhealthy” suppositions about a PR component of the news. Experts find contradictions in the information from the intelligence services.
In January, an explosion went off in a house in Odessa. One of the men in the flat /Ruslan Madayev/ died, the other one /Ilya Pyanzin/ got burnt. At first, there was a version about the explosion of gas, but later on components of an explosive device were found in the flat. Soon, Ukraine’s anti-terrorist units detained the third participant in the group /Adam Osmayev/. The First Channel’s story includes confessions of Ilya Pyanzin and Adam Osmayev, where they claim they wanted to assassinate Putin, and besides were involved in attacks on some “economic objects.”
Ukraine’s and Russia’s intelligence services crushed the terrorists' plans, who prepared assassination of Vladimir Putin, Komsomolskaya Pravda reports. Criminals on the international wanted list were arrested in Odessa. Their evidences showed they planned the assassination attempt in Moscow immediately after the presidential election. In early January, Ukraine’s chief police department in Odessa opened a criminal case on explosion in the house at 24, Tiraspol Street in Odessa, where a Russian citizen of 26 died, a 28 year-old citizen of Kazakhstan was wounded, and the third man got lost. The explosion happened as the bandits were making an explosive device. On January 6, Ukraine’s security service sent a flash telegram to Russia’s FSB /federal security service/: one of those men who rented the flat died during the explosion, doctors saved life of another one, and he gave evidence. According to the man who survived, Ilya Pyanzin, he, together with Ruslan Madayev, who died, had come via Turkey from the United Arab Emirates having instructions from representatives of main terrorist Doku Umarov. Their final objective was the assassination of Vladimir Putin.
The terrorists’ laptop contained a plan of the preparations. There was a video with Putin’s cortege, which had been taken from various positions and in different times, including information on location of the guarded person. Detained Osmayev said, most likely repeating his instructors from abroad: “The deadline was after the Russian presidential election.”
Rossiiskaya Gazeta reports that investigators believe the terrorists tried to test a new explosive, which may burn through armour-plating. This must have become a grave mistake: the bandits were drying the Hell’s mixture wrapped in a newspaper on a radiator. The printing ink acts as the explosive’s catalyst.
Kommersant refers to specialists in car armour-plating, who say the protection level of the presidential limousine is not perfect. One of them says the “special garage buys for the country leaders a production version of Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman Guard of VR6 and VR7 protection class.” “Vehicles of the kind are unable to protect passengers from an explosion of an army mine designed against tanks and armoured military vehicles, especially if we are speaking about a side shell, which hits the target from a side,” he said. The specialist says that not a single armoured vehicle in the world may solve this technical task. Such a car may be made individually only. But now, the United States only designs a special vehicle for the country leaders, and earlier a similar practice was in the USSR.
President of the Fund of Effective Policy Gleb Pavlovsky confirmed to Novye Izvestia that Ukrainian intelligence service reported the information a month earlier and now they “only refreshed the old sandwich.” A political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky believes, any representatives of the North Caucasus underground may confess in preparations for assassination of Putin, because “killing Putin is a dream of a terrorist, a summit of carrier.” But during elections “a failed assassination attempt is an advantage always.” During past elections, a similar attempt was revealed, too – a sniper rifle was found in a flat in Sadovnicheskaya Embankment as someone had planned to shoot Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev as they were walking along Vasilyevsky Spusk to make a speech before their allies on the election day of March 2, 2008. Later on, however, it became clear that the rifle belonged to a criminal group, which had never ever prepared any assassination attempts. And the federal security service reported that in February of 2000, somebody planned to murder Vladimir Putin during the burial of St. Petersburg’s former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.
Moskovsky Komslomolets quotes Igor Mintusov, a board member of the International Association of Political Consultants, as saying: “I share the view of Deputy Gennady Gudkov, he voiced to me the view that this event is used exactly by Putin’s PR services in order to overlap the news of the opposition’s activities. At the same time, it supports the image of Putin as a figure mobilising everybody for defence from enemies – both internal and those from outside.”
A member of the Association of Political Technologists Andrei Bogdanov, in his turn, tells the newspaper: “It cannot be to the benefit of Putin. It is a way to start a noise about “tightening screws” and to emerge a wave of civil indignation. The heroic police arrest in Odessa some people, who had been preparing an assassination – this is a too silly and primitive approach for Putin. While the opposition, on the contrary, may use it to the utmost by claiming it to be the Kremlin’s provocation and that the power speculates about the topic of terrorism once again.”