US prosecutors have charged five people with recruiting individuals on Moscow’s behalf to spy on and kill targets in the United States and other countries, as the FBI warned on Wednesday of Russian assassination plots against allies of Kyiv in Europe and the US.
The five are due to face trial in federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say the network has been active since at least 2024.
According to the indictment, the suspects recruited people to carry out killings and attacks at locations around the world. While the original targets were said to be Russian dissidents and defectors, the group’s focus has recently shifted to allies of Kyiv.
Recruits were also allegedly encouraged to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries supporting Ukraine.
Ukrainian news site The Kyiv Independent reported that three of the five are senior members of Russia’s FSB security service: Yuri Khrameyev, Kirill Khrameyev and Umis Romagoza Durruthy.
The other two, Yaidel Delgado Suarez and Angel Eduardo Castro, are accused of operating from the US on behalf of Russian intelligence.
Last summer, Suarez and Castro allegedly approached a person in the US to spy on a Russian dissident living there, offering between $1,000 and $1,500. The recruit refused a later offer of $40,000 to “eliminate” the target, after which the pair allegedly sought someone else for the job.
Prosecutors also allege that in 2025 Khrameyev tried to recruit a US citizen to kill a person in Lithuania who was described as someone “spreading lies about Russia”.
That American allegedly turned down an offer of $25,000 for the murder and was instead given what prosecutors described as “a simpler task”, such as setting fire to a warehouse. According to the indictment, Khrameyev promised “serious money for serious work”.
Durruthy is accused of co-ordinating attacks in the Czech Republic and Lithuania in 2024.
“These defendants allegedly operated as part of a worldwide murder-for-hire network that stretched into the United States, seeking to recruit American citizens and others to commit murders at the direction of the Kremlin,” said John Eisenberg, the US assistant attorney general for national security.
All five suspects remain at large.
