Sixteen days before the parade, Belousov says he called US defence secretary Lloyd Austin for a 'genuinely tough conversation'
Russian intelligence allegedly had discovered a Kyiv covert operation to strike at the Navy Day parade in St Petersburg on July 28.
Such an attack would have plunged Russia and the US into an 'uncontrollable conflict', implying a nuclear World War Three, according to Russian state TV Rossiya 1, which interviewed Putin's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, who described the alleged plot as 'madness'.
Comment: Interestingly, less than a month ago Russia revealed that a number of assassination threats and attempts had been thwarted. And so what's perhaps notable is that this one is being divulged, and in detail.
It's unlikely that these attempts have just begun occurring, nor, despite this announcement, will it be the last. If anything, it may be that the attempts are occurring with an increased intensity and, now, with the Trump assassination attempt in the public consciousness, Russia feels there's more reason to call attention to it.
The Navy Day parade was attended by dictator Putin, 71, and his defence minister Andrei Belousov, 65.
Comment: Putin is no dictator. Elections observed and verified by international observers, and independent polls, show that he enjoys at least around an 80% approval rating on average, whereas, across the West, leaders scrape by with 30%, and often less.
The suspicion in Moscow based on the 'intelligence' Russia had obtained was that Ukraine was seeking to assassinate both men.
Sixteen days before the parade, Belousov called US defence secretary Lloyd Austin for a 'genuinely tough conversation', said TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva.
'Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov called the Pentagon himself for the first time, and he said something that made US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin squirm.
Comment: This is notable, because diplomatic channels between the two countries have been all but dead for some time.
'If Kyiv's operation had happened, it would have guaranteed to plunge Russia and the USA into a phase of uncontrollable conflict.'
Russia evidently believed that the US was aware of the attack plot and feared it was involved in it - which Pentagon officials have denied.
But according to Ryabkov calls were made to Ukraine, stopping a covert operation on the Navy Day parade, which Putin and Belousov later attended without incident.
'The signal sent by the Russian side....not just to Washington, but to other capitals under Washington's control - was received,' said Ryabkov.
'We avoided a new escalation cycle.
'But that specific episode is very troubling...
'It was planned [by Ukraine]....to cause maximum damage and achieve the maximum media effect they needed.
'We got past that specific episode, thank God, which means that the signal from our military leadership and the defence minister to his American counterpart apparently had an effect.
Ryabkov did not specify what precisely was contained in the Russian intelligence, or the nature of the suspected strike plot.
'I don't want to go into details, but there was indeed a certain linkage with such events,' he said, referring to Navy Day.
'The details of the audacious action are currently a state secret,' said Skabeeva, also known as Putin's 'Iron Doll'.
'At the parade in St. Petersburg after the foiled provocation, Vladimir Putin made a statement that the whole world is discussing.'
She was referring to Putin's threat to implement 'mirror measures' if the US went ahead with plans to deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, namely weapons that could hit the West in ten minutes.
At the time of the 12 July call, Moscow said Belousov and Austin had discussed 'the issue of preventing security threats and reducing the risk of possible escalation was discussed.'
The statement at the time did not outline a suspected Ukrainian covert mission.
A theory from Russian Telegram channel Win/Win is that an attack could have involved launching kamikaze sea drones from a neutral ship in the Baltic.
Russian military expert Dmitry Kornev said: 'Another possibility is a combined attack from both sea and air, which would be the most dangerous.
'Nothing happened publicly.
'No changes to the parade programme or regulations were noted by observers.
'The parade went entirely according to plan.
'If additional security measures were taken, they went unnoticed.
'We might thank Austin and Belousov for this, or perhaps someone is just playing this card now, which seems unlikely.
'Most likely, something was indeed planned and did not happen.
'An assassination attempt, even if unsuccessful, would have provoked a very sharp response, burning all bridges to potential negotiations and normalising the conflict, putting an end to any aspirations for peace in this situation.'
Respected Russian editor Alexei Venediktov said the Russians were concerned that a Ukrainian plot involved an assassination bid against Putin and his defence minister.
Comment: Whilst Putin has been a target of the establishment for at least a decade, with all the assassination and coup attempts, in addition to all the escalations and provocations in recent months, it appears that they're going all out, and it's likely that there'll be even more yet to come: