Russian intelligence services are planning targeted assassinations in the United States and European countries that support Ukraine. This was stated by the US Department of Justice, announcing the indictment of five people currently at large.
According to the indictment, a network of Russian intelligence services paid or attempted to pay individuals in the US and other countries to monitor and carry out targeted assassinations, “as well as instructed accomplices to carry out or attempt acts of terrorism against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries aligned with Ukraine.”
“Since at least 2024, a network of individuals operating for Russia’s intelligence services has conspired to carry out, and has carried out, attacks and assassinations throughout the world, including in the United States,” the US Department of Justice says, referring to the RIS Network, the arm responsible for carrying out attacks abroad, “focusing on Russian dissidents and defectors and, more recently, on nations perceived to be allies of Ukraine.
Recently members of the Ris Network attempted to recruit several individuals in the United States to carry out surveillance and assassination activities in the country.” Three of the defendants are high-level members of the Ris Network: Yuri Kharameev, Kirill Khrameev and Oemis Romagoz Durruthy. The other two members included in the indictment are Yaidel Delgado Suarez and Eduardo Castro, who worked together to recruit individuals based in the United States to surveil and attempt to kill a prominent dissident Russian resident in the USA.
“The defendants allegedly operated as part of a global murder network that extended into the United States,” said Deputy Attorney General John A. Eisenberg. “We will reject any attempt by foreign intelligence services to operate freely in our country,” he stressed.