Ukraine lacks the evidence to charge two men with plotting to kill Vladimir Putin despite Russian television airing a confession from them days ahead of Russia’s elections, a report said Monday.
Russia’s Channel One television revealed the alleged plot to kill Putin in a report broadcast less than a week before presidential elections that the Russian strongman won in a landslide victory.
His opponents had already cast suspicion on the plot — which the report said was hatched by Islamist militants in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa — as having the hallmarks of a stunt to boost Putin’s ratings. “The investigation lacks direct evidence of the detained men preparing (to commit) an act of terror against Vladimir Putin,” the Kommersant Ukraine business daily quoted a source familiar with the investigation as saying. Kommersant said Ukrainian investigators had enough evidence to charge the two men with firearms and explosives violations — crimes that carried prison penalties to two to five years. The newspaper did not explain why the televised confessions — where both the suspects said they had plotted to kill Putin — were not considered sufficient evidence on their own. But the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted another security source as saying that “to all appearances neither of the detained were implicated in planning acts of terror either in Russia or Ukraine.”