Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, Russia's most wanted militant, will be charged in absentia with masterminding an assassination plot against president-elect and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Kommersant business daily reported on Friday.
In late February, state-run Channel One reported that the Ukrainian and Russian security services had arrested two men, Ilya Pyanzin and Adam Osmayev, in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, who confessed they had been hired by Umarov to carry out an attack on Putin.
They also confessed to planning to murder controversial Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Neither plot had gotten past the planning stage.
In mid-March, a Moscow court issued an extradition request for Pyanzin and Osmayev, who were being held in Ukraine, Kommersant said. At that time the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had not requested an arrest order for Umarov.
Umarov has claimed responsibility for all the main terror attacks in Russia in recent years, including a bombing at Domodedovo Airport in January, 2011 that killed 37 people and 2010 twin suicide attacks on the Moscow subway in which 40 people died.
