Feds accuse Russia of backing murder-for-hire plot on US soil
Department of Justice officials say the Kremlin funded a “global assassination network” and tried to recruit U.S. citizens to carry out dissident killings on its behalf.
MANHATTAN (CN) — An intelligence network working for the Russian Federation paid individuals in the United States to conduct surveillance and carry out targeted killings of dissidents, according to an indictment from the Department of Justice unsealed Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors charged five men, all at large, on counts including conspiracy to finance terrorism and murder-for-hire conspiracy over their suspected involvement with the Kremlin-backed intelligence agencies. The defendants are accused of playing varying roles in terroristic acts and attempted assassinations around the world, including at least one in the United States.
“These defendants allegedly operated as part of a global assassination network that reached into the United States, attempting to recruit U.S. citizens and foreigners to carry out killings at the behest of the Kremlin,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in a statement Tuesday. “Actions like these represent a gross violation of our sovereignty and a threat to our national security. We will stamp out any foreign intelligence services’ attempt to operate freely in our great nation, and we will not rest until they and their enablers suffer the most severe consequences that federal law can levy.”
According to the 17-page indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York, two of the defendants recruited a Venezuelan citizen living in the U.S. to surveil and attempt to murder a prominent U.S.-based Russian dissident, who is not identified by name.
Those defendants, 35-year-old Yaidel Delgado Suarez of Cuba and 22-year-old Angel Eduardo Castro of Venezuela, worked as recruiters for what prosecutors called the RIS Network, part of the Kremlin’s violent anti-dissident intelligence apparatus.
They offered $40,000 for the hit, and told their recruit that they wanted to “eliminate” the dissident and make them “disappear,” according to the indictment. They also directed him to send them surveillance photos and videos in exchange for between $1,000 and $1,500, and asked him for help finding “someone who wants to do construction,” a reference to murder, prosecutors say.
“Let me know as soon as possible because I have a chain and my boss has questions,” Suarez told the recruit in a text message, according to prosecutors. “I have people in Mexico right now [but they’re] delayed. I only need a response to know if someone can do the work. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow just need to know if [they] can.”
The other three defendants named in the indictment — 35-year-old Oemis Romagoza Durruthy of Cuba, 63-year-old Yuri Khrameev and his son, 27-year-old Kirill Khrameev of Russia — are accused of being high-ranking members of the RIS Network, who in 2025 tried to recruit a U.S. citizen to surveil and murder an individual in Lithuania they said was a “bad guy” who was “telling lies about Russia.”
Prosecutors say Khrameev suggested the target could be killed by “throwing a bottle of gasoline” or “sticking a knife” in him. Khrameev, who identified himself as a “colonel of Russian intelligence agencies” in messages with the recruit, also said that the goal was to target “all the countries that are helping Ukraine” amid its ongoing war with Russia.
The U.S. citizen accepted $200 to surveil the individual but ultimately declined the $25,000 he was offered to kill them.
A year prior, prosecutors say Durruthy coordinated travel for a criminal associate in conjunction with a botched arson attack in Prague, Czechia.
The government claims the Russian Federation has a long history of carrying out attacks around the world on its defectors, and that the RIS Network is one of the cogs in the machine.
“The Russian Federation’ s external operations have focused on Russian dissidents and defectors and, particularly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on nations perceived as Ukrainian allies,” prosecutors claim in the filing.
The indictment references a number of defector deaths largely attributed to the Kremlin, including that of longtime Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in 2024 while in custody in a Russian prison. The five defendants in this case are not accused of involvement in that incident, however.
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