SCOTLAND YARD has thwarted a suspected plot to assassinate Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after arresting a renegade Russian intelligence agent in London.

Detectives from the Yard??s anti-terrorist branch SO13 arrested the former KGB major, said to be a trained hitman, and a second Russian after a tip-off last weekend. The two men were allegedly trying to engage Russian exiles in Britain in the conspiracy.

The would-be assassins were detained for five days at a high- security police station in Paddington Green, west London, under the Terrorism Act 2000. Detectives are thought to have questioned them about links to Chechen guerrillas.

Scotland Yard confirmed last night that the two men, aged 40 and 36, had been arrested last Sunday in London. They were released on Friday on condition that they returned to Moscow.

The alleged plot ?? in which Putin was to be shot dead by a sniper while on a foreign trip ?? was uncovered by the Yard nine days ago. Police were alerted after they received a detailed legal statement from Alexander Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer in Russia??s FSB, the main successor organisation to the KGB.

Litvinenko, who defected to Britain three years ago, said he believed the assassin, one of his former KGB colleagues, was working as an undercover agent with the FSB. In a 10-page draft affidavit drawn up in the presence of two senior British lawyers, Litvinenko told police that the renegade agent was known to him as an FSB hitman.

The man, whose identity is also known to The Sunday Times, is said to have outlined the alleged plot in a series of conversations with Litvinenko on the telephone and at a prearranged meeting on a bench outside the Wagamama noodle restaurant in London??s Leicester Square.

The hitman is said to have told Litvinenko that Putin needed to be toppled. ??He told Litvinenko that Putin must be overthrown, that he needed to be whacked,?? said a source close to the investigation.

A senior Whitehall source said that MI5 was aware of the arrests: ??This is a criminal investigation into something that has an international dimension. It??s a matter for the Yard who are taking it seriously.??

Documents obtained by The Sunday Times reveal that the two men arrived from Moscow earlier this month and booked into the Hilton Metropole on London??s Edgware Road.

One of them then telephoned Litvinenko to say he wanted an urgent meeting. When they met in Leicester Square, the Russian spy ?? known as Major P ?? said he knew a senior officer in the FSB department who supervised security for Putin during his trips abroad.

The spy said the officer could provide advance information on Putin??s route while the president was abroad, enabling an assassin to plan his attack. Major P suggested the assassination would be carried out by Chechen separatists who would, according to an insider, ??pop up somewhere on Putin??s route with snipers?? rifles??.

The insider added: ??Major P said (Putin) had to be overthrown because he was bankrupting the country and was going to put everyone in jail.??

Litvinenko told detectives that the alleged assassins had asked him to set up a meeting with Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon recently granted asylum in Britain. The men apparently wanted Berezovsky to finance the plot.

Friends say Litvinenko and Berezovsky feared that it could be an attempt to set them up by implicating them in the plot. They immediately informed the police.

Berezovsky said yesterday that he and Litvinenko were called to a meeting with their lawyer at Scotland Yard on Friday. ??The police told me they were holding two men and that one of them had admitted being involved in a plot to kill President Putin,?? he said.

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