Putin's Well-Timed Assassination Plot: Leonid Bershidsky

Mass anti-government protests in Moscow are no reason to suspend the venerable traditions of Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine. Ever since he first won the presidency in 2000, Putin has told voters that his job is to lead the “fight for Russia” against enemies, both foreign and domestic. To underscore this immutable message, it is an established custom to foil an attempt on Putin's life not long before the vote.

In early 2000, when Putin was preparing for his first election as acting president, terrorists were purportedly stopped from assassinating him at the Feb. 24 funeral of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. In 2004, before the second election, the propaganda machine skipped a beat, possibly because the vote was largely uncontested. In 2008, with Putin preparing temporarily to cede power to Dmitry Medvedev, everything was back on track: It was announced that right around the March election, a sharpshooter from Tajikistan, Shakhvelad Osmanov, intended to eliminate both Putin and Medvedev with a shot from an apartment window as they walked past St. Basil's Cathedral to the Kremlin. Later, however, sources within Russian special services linked Osmanov's alleged preparations to a gangland plot unrelated to Putin or politics.