On the eve of Russia's presidential election, Russian and Ukrainian security services have uncovered a plot to murder prime minister Vladimir Putin on the broad Kutuzovskiy Prospekt in Moscow.
Mr Putin and other high officials use the road to travel to and from their state residences in the suburbs.
Russia's Channel One TV station this morning broadcast footage of the arrest and questioning of two men in the Ukrainian City of Odessa who said they had been contracted by Chechen terrorists to kill Mr Putin shortly after next Sunday's presidential election.
They had planned to plant anti-tank mines and set them off as Mr Putin's car travelled along the road..
Kutuzovskiy Prospekt, a busy residential and business street, is the main thoroughfare for Mr Putin to and from his offices in the Russian White House.
It contains the former Ukraina Hotel, now the Radisson Royal, a number of supermarkets, a Porsche car showroom and other amenites.
There is little doubt that an attempt on Mr Putin's life would have endagered a large number of ordinary Russian citizens and foreign residents who live in diplomatic compounds in the area.
Some Russians reacted with scepticism, making clear on social network sites that they did not believe the report or suggesting the timing of the announcement was intended to attract sympathy for Mr Putin before the March 4th election.
Opinion polls show Mr Putin, a former KGB officer who crushed separatists during a war he launched in the Chechnya region in the North Caucasus before he became president, will easily win the election and reclaim the post he held from 2000 until 2008. But he faces a growing opposition protest movement and wants to secure outright victory on Sunday, averting a runoff that might dent his authority.
The appearance of broad electoral fraud in December parliamentary elections has stirred scepticism about Mr Putin largely among liberals and nationalists in the cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. The internet has been used to mobilise anti-Putin protests over the last three months.
One person, identified only as zilnur, said on his Russian-language Twitter feed: "I am watching the news on TV - Putin uncovered an assassination attempt on himself. Just before the election ... Clowns."
Several assassination attempts have been reported on Putin since he rose to power in 2000 but such reports have rarely made a big impact in Russia.The chief insurgent group fighting for an islamist state in the mountainous north Caucasus is known as the "Caucasus Emirate".
It has carried out a chain of attacks including the suicide bombing of Russia's busiest airport last year that killed 36.
It says it will strike at political and economic targets in the Russian heartland.Russia's Channel One said the plotters had been planning to travel to Moscow to kill Mr Putin but the Ukrainian special services had been tipped off by the Russian FSB security service, which Mr Putin once headed.
"Our final goal was to go to Moscow and attempt to assassinate Putin," a man described as one of the plotters was shown as saying on Channel One. "Our deadline was after the election of the president of Russia".
Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mr Putin (59) also did not comment immediately although aides said he had chaired a government meeting on the military-industrial complex at his residence of Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow today.
Additional reporting: Reuters