Federal prosecutors have unsealed an indictment accusing five men tied to Russian intelligence of conspiring to assassinate a Kremlin critic living in the Washington, D.C., area, part of what officials describe as a global network financing terrorism and violent operations on Moscow's behalf.
The Justice Department named all five defendants: Yuri Khrameev, a former Russian intelligence colonel known as "Colonel Yuri"; his son Kirill Khrameev, an officer in Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB; Cuban national Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, who prosecutors say coordinated attacks for the network; Yaidel Delgado Suarez, known as "Viking"; and Angel Eduardo Castro. Three of the five face conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire charges. All five remain at large.
The indictment identifies the operation as the "Russian Intelligence Services Network," or RIS, a sprawling apparatus that prosecutors say has been active since at least 2024. Its mission, federal authorities allege, has expanded well beyond silencing individual dissidents. The network stands accused of financing terrorism, coordinating violent operations across multiple countries, supporting attacks on civilian and military infrastructure in Europe, and conducting surveillance of Russian dissidents abroad.
The Washington plot unfolded in late August, Fox News reported. Suspected Russian intelligence operatives directed a U.S.-based Venezuelan citizen to secretly film two locations in the Washington area tied to the unnamed Kremlin critic. The instructions were specific: put his phone in airplane mode, begin recording before entering the neighborhood, slow down as he passed the target's home, and delete the messages afterward.
The recruit completed the surveillance. Then the network allegedly offered him $40,000 to carry out the killing itself.
He refused.
Prosecutors say the conspirators relied on coded language throughout. "Construction" meant assassination. "Measuring a plot of land" meant surveillance. When the Venezuelan recruit declined to go further, the network did not stop. It sought other U.S.-based recruits and noted it also had "people in Mexico" available for the job.
The Washington plot was not the only assassination attempt described in the indictment. Prosecutors allege the same network recruited a U.S. citizen in Lithuania to surveil another Kremlin critic and then offered approximately $25,000 to kill him. That recruit also refused.
After both recruits balked at murder, the network's focus shifted. Prosecutors say it pivoted toward soliciting sabotage attacks against infrastructure in countries supporting Ukraine, including alleged plots targeting electrical substations, warehouses, and transportation hubs. The indictment describes a broader strategic evolution: the network moved from targeting individual Russian dissidents and defectors to attacking countries "aligned, or perceived to be aligned, with Ukraine."
That shift tracks with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022 and reshaped Moscow's covert priorities across the West.
The indictment fits a well-documented pattern. U.S. officials have previously accused Russia of orchestrating killings of Kremlin critics overseas and conducting covert influence and espionage operations inside the United States. The most notorious case remains the 2018 poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent. British authorities blamed Russian military intelligence for that attack. Moscow denied responsibility.
But the Washington case carries a sharper edge. This was not a poisoning on foreign soil. This was an alleged assassination conspiracy inside the American capital, directed at a person living under the protection, at least in theory, of U.S. law. The operatives did not just plan. They recruited. They surveilled. They offered cash. And when one recruit said no, they looked for another.
The Justice Department confirmed that all five defendants remain at large. The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday, but the absence of any arrests underscores a familiar frustration: federal prosecutors can build a case, name the conspirators, and lay out the evidence, yet the suspects sit beyond reach, presumably in Russia or allied territory where extradition is a dead letter.
Several questions remain unanswered. Prosecutors have not publicly identified the Kremlin critic targeted in Washington, the critic surveilled in Lithuania, or the Venezuelan recruit who carried out the surveillance but refused the killing. The specific Washington-area locations filmed by the recruit have not been disclosed. The charges beyond conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, for the two defendants not facing that specific count, have not been detailed publicly.
What the indictment does make plain is scope. This was not a rogue operation or a freelance hit. Prosecutors describe a network with state backing, global reach, operational discipline, and a willingness to recruit ordinary people, a Venezuelan citizen in D.C., an American in Lithuania, to do the killing that trained operatives could not easily do themselves on foreign soil.
A government that sends intelligence officers to recruit assassins in the American capital is not a government interested in peace. It is a government testing how far it can reach, and whether anyone will stop it.
