Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has not been affected by an alleged plot to assassinate him, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
"It hasn't affected either the mood or working rhythm of Vladimir Putin," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid.
Russian state television said on Monday that Ukrainain security services had arrested two suspects in the Ukrainian port of Odessa last month over a plot to assassinate the prime minister. Footage on Russia's state-run Channel One showed both men admitting to the conspiracy. They were held after an explosion at an appartment in which anothert suspected was killed.
Peskov earlier dismissed as "blasphemous" media reports that the alleged assassination attempt was a ploy to boost Putin's popularity ahead of Sunday's presidential polls, in which he is all but certain to reclaim the post he held between 2000 and 2008.
But Moscow security analyst Andrei Soldatov told RIA Novosti the alleged plot was just that.
"Putin could profit from this idea to show that he has everything under control and that he is the one we should be grateful to for our security and stability," Soldatov said.
Peskov told Komsomolskaya Pravda the thwarted assassination attempt was orchestrated by Putin's enemies seeking to "oppose everything he does, namely the stabilization of the situation in the North Caucasus."
The TV report said the assassins had been dispatched by Chechen warlord Doku Umarov.
However, Ukraine's Segodnya daily newspaper cited a police source in January that the same men were planning to kill an Odessan businessman with hand-made explosives.
