The suspects in an alleged plot to assassinate Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who were detained in Ukraine, will not be extradited to Russia until they serve prison time for crimes committed in Ukraine, the Kommersant daily reported on Tuesday.
Russian state television said on Monday that Ukrainian security services had arrested the two suspects in the Ukrainian port of Odessa last month. Footage on Russia’s state-run Channel One showed both men admitting to the conspiracy.
According to sources in the Ukrainian State Security Service, the detainees are also suspected of organizing a bomb attack in Odessa on January 4, 2012.
However, a Ukrainian law enforcement source said the two men were being intensively questioned by investigators from Russia’s Federal Security Service.
“Even at the Odessa pretrial detention center they are interrogating the suspects without the participation of our officers,” the source said.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry 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.