Federal prosecutors charged five people connected to Russian intelligence services with running an assassination network that offered an American recruit up to $40,000 to kill a Russian dissident living near Washington, according to an indictment the Justice Department unsealed in Manhattan federal court on Sept. 15. All five defendants are believed to be living in Russia and remain at large.
The case, filed in the Southern District of New York, accuses the network of trying to recruit Americans to surveil and kill Kremlin critics in the United States and Europe, then offering escalating cash payments once surveillance was complete. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the charges show federal authorities disrupting foreign threats before they turn deadly. “It is our job to stop America’s adversaries from unleashing violence and terror on American soil,” Blanche said in the Justice Department’s announcement. “And that’s precisely what we are doing.”
Five Defendants Named in an Alleged Assassination Network
Prosecutors charged Yuri Khrameev, 63, a former colonel in Russian intelligence services who went by “Colonel Yuri,” along with his son, Kirill Khrameev, 27, whom the indictment identifies as an FSB officer. The other three defendants are Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, 35, a Cuban national living in Russia who coordinated attack logistics; Yaidel Delgado Suarez, 35, a Cuban national known as “Viking” described as a prolific recruiter; and Angel Eduardo Castro, 22, a Venezuelan national who worked with Suarez on recruitment and surveillance.
All five face a conspiracy to finance terrorism charge that carries a maximum 20-year sentence. Khrameev, Suarez and Castro also face a conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire count, which carries up to 10 years. FBI Director Kash Patel called the plot a direct threat inside U.S. borders. “The charges announced reveal an alleged plot by the Russian intelligence services to murder a dissident on U.S. soil,” Patel said. U.S.
Attorney Jamie McDonald for the Southern District of New York described the operation in blunter terms, calling the network “brazen, aggressive and far-reaching.”
A Price Scale That Climbed From Surveillance Photos to a Killing
According to the indictment, the network in the summer of 2026 recruited a Brooklyn resident to photograph and film locations tied to a prominent Russian dissident believed to live near Washington, paying $1,000 to $1,500 for the surveillance work. Once the reconnaissance was done, Suarez and Castro allegedly offered the recruit $40,000 to “eliminate” or “disappear” the target. The recruit delivered the photos and videos but declined the killing, according to CBS News’ reporting on the unsealed charges.
A separate plot unfolded in 2025, prosecutors say, when Kirill Khrameev met a U.S. citizen at the Estonia-Russia border and offered $200 for photographs of an address in Vilnius, Lithuania, tied to a person he described as “telling lies about Russia.” Yuri Khrameev later offered roughly $25,000 to have that person killed, proposing arson or a stabbing.
When the recruit declined over fear of getting caught, Yuri allegedly pivoted to a backup plan: sabotage attacks, including fires at warehouses or electrical substations, aimed at “countries helping Ukraine.” Durruthy, meanwhile, is accused of arranging travel and cryptocurrency transfers to support separate attacks carried out in Prague in June 2024 and in Lithuania that September.
Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg, who leads the department’s National Security Division, said the case reflects a coordinated effort rather than isolated incidents: “These defendants allegedly operated as part of a global assassination network that reached into the United States.” CBS News said it contacted the Russian Embassy in Washington for comment on the allegations and received no response.
Why an Unfinished Plot Can Still Carry a 20-Year Charge
None of the alleged killings happened. Every recruit approached in the indictment — the Brooklyn surveillance operative and the man solicited near the Lithuanian border — turned down the murder request once it was made. That is not a legal obstacle for prosecutors. A conspiracy charge does not require prosecutors to prove a killing occurred, or even that a triggerman was found; it requires proof of an agreement between the parties and at least one overt act taken to carry it out, which is why the case is built on recruitment meetings, surveillance photos and the payments themselves rather than a completed murder.
The pay structure the indictment describes also shows how the network scaled its offers. Recruits collected $200 to $1,500 for reconnaissance work like photographing an address or filming a building, then were offered $25,000 to $40,000 once the ask became a killing, a jump of well over 100 times the surveillance rate once murder entered the conversation, according to the figures in the indictment.
The allegations echo a case with a completed outcome. A Berlin court in December 2021 convicted a Russian national, Vadim Krasikov, of shooting and killing Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former Chechen rebel commander, in a Berlin park in August 2019, ruling that the killing was what the court called a “state-contracted killing” ordered by Moscow.
FBI New York Assistant Director James Barnacle Jr. said the newly unsealed case fits the same pattern of Russian state actors reaching beyond Russia’s borders to silence critics, saying members of the network “conspired to intimidate, threaten, or murder people on U.S. soil.” FBI Washington Assistant Director Darren Cox said his office moved once it identified the threat: “When this threat was identified, the Washington Field Office and our partners moved quickly to disrupt the plot.”
Because all five defendants are believed to remain in Russia, which does not extradite its citizens to the United States, prosecution is likely to proceed without any of the accused appearing in a Manhattan courtroom for the foreseeable future.
