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Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged five men working for Russian intelligence with conspiring to finance terrorism and arrange killings, including the murder of a prominent Russian dissident living in the United States. The Justice Department unsealed the indictment on September 15. All five defendants remain at large.
Three of the accused are described as senior figures in the network. Yuri Khrameev, 63, is a former colonel in the Russian intelligence services. His son, Kirill Khrameev, 27, is an officer in the FSB. Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, 35, a Cuban national living in Russia, handled travel and logistics. The two others are Yaidel Delgado Suarez, 35, of Cuba, and Angel Eduardo Castro, 22, of Venezuela. All five face a count of conspiring to finance terrorism. Yuri Khrameev, Suarez and Castro also face a murder-for-hire conspiracy count.
This summer the network recruited a man living in Brooklyn to watch a dissident it believed was in the United States, according to the indictment. Suarez sent him two addresses linked to the target, gave him instructions on how to photograph them, and promised between $1,000 and $1,500 for the job. The man sent back photographs and video. Suarez and Castro then offered him $40,000 to eliminate the target. He declined to carry out the killing himself. Prosecutors say Suarez asked whether he knew anyone who would, and said he had people in Mexico who could do it instead.
A year earlier the same network tried a similar approach in Europe. Kirill Khrameev paid an American $200 to photograph an address in Vilnius, Lithuania, then introduced him to his father. Yuri Khrameev offered roughly $25,000 to kill the man who lived there, saying the target was spreading dirt about Russia. When the American refused, he was offered a simpler job instead: setting fire to a warehouse or an electrical substation in a country supporting Ukraine.
The network is accused of coordinating attacks in Prague in June 2024 and in Lithuania three months later, with Durruthy booking travel for the people involved. The charges land alongside a run of similar allegations across Europe. Poland, Germany and Czechia have each accused Russia of sabotage on their soil in recent years, NPR reported. What is new here is the reach into American addresses. James C. Barnacle Jr., who leads the FBI's New York field office, said the bureau was "committed to confronting transnational repression wherever it occurs."
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