Two men who agreed to supply homemade bombs to be detonated at a crowded, post-election rally on Manezh Square next to the Kremlin have been arrested in the Moscow Region, Newsru.com said.
The chief suspect, Ilya Parkhomenko, 21, had been under police surveillance since February. He had attracted police scrutiny by boasting of his bomb-making skills on the popular Russian social networking site, Vkontakte.
Parkhomenko was arrested on March 2 after investigators learned he had agreed to sell several explosive devices, including two radio-controlled bombs, to a man who said they would be used "on March 5 or 6 at the mass rallies following the presidential elections."
During police interrogation Parkhomenko identified an accomplice, Andrei Zhuravlyov, 22. The young men had made the bombs at Zhuravlyov’s dacha.
They face jail terms of between five and eight years.
There was no information concerning the fate of the would-be buyer of the bombs.
Emotions have been running high in Moscow ahead of the presidential poll with police beefing up security. Putin has spoken of possible provocations from the opposition, speculating that they may seek to kill a "sacrificial victim" and then blame it on the government.
