Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, narrowly escaped death at the hands of a terrorist assassination squad, Russian state television reported on Monday, less than a week before the country's presidential elections. Channel One reported that Russian and Ukrainian security services foiled plans by a group of separatists from Russia's restive North Caucasus region who were arrested earlier this month. The plot's mastermind was said to be Doku Umarov, a Chechen rebel leader hiding out in the hinterlands of southern Russia who has been implicated in a number of other terror attacks. The plot was reportedly foiled in the Ukrainian city of Odessa after an explosion on January 4 at an apartment that the terrorist cell was using to manufacture explosives, killing one member of the gang. A second man was injured in the blast and arrested, leading investigators to Adam Osmayev, described as the leader of the cell, a Chechen who had previously lived in London and described by Channel One as an international fugitive. "Our final goal was to go to Moscow and attempt to assassinate Putin," Mr Osmayev said on a video shown on Channel One, his face and hands bearing numerous scars and bruises. He added that the gang had planned to either use anti-vehicle mines to attack Mr Putin's motorcade or launch a suicide attack. He said the member of the gang who was killed in the January blast had been prepared to act as a suicide bomber. Russian news agency Interfax quoted an anonymous source in Ukraine's security services as confirming that three Russian citizens had been arrested on terrorism charges in Odessa on February 6, but they declined to give the identities, though one of them was almost certainly Mr Osmayev. According to Interfax, Mr Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov "basically confirmed" the story, however he has so far declined to comment. The timing of the news, with days to go before the election which Mr Putin is the favourite to win, was questioned by some critics of the Kremlin. "Why was the information hidden for so long?" asked journalist Gamid Gamidov on his blog on the website of opposition-orientated radio station Ekho Moskvy. Did they decide to wait and announce it on the eve of the elections, in order to add weight to their candidate's presidential campaign?