The Justice Department unsealed charges Tuesday against five alleged members of a Russian intelligence-directed network accused of orchestrating a $40,000 murder-for-hire plot against a Kremlin critic living in Washington, D.C. All five defendants remain at large.
The Justice Department unsealed charges Tuesday against five alleged members of a Russian intelligence-directed network accused of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot in Washington, D.C., marking one of the most serious publicly alleged Russian operations to recruit an assassin on American soil in recent years. Prosecutors say the network financed terrorism and coordinated violence across multiple countries, and that its operatives offered a U.S.-based recruit $40,000 to kill a Kremlin critic living in the nation's capital. All five defendants remain at large.
The indictment lands as the Trump administration presses a harder line against Moscow's covert campaigns, and it hands federal prosecutors a rare case built on an alleged assassination plot that reached into an American neighborhood rather than a foreign battlefield.
According to the indictment, the alleged operation reached Washington in late August, when suspected Russian intelligence operatives directed a U.S.-based Venezuelan citizen to secretly film two Washington-area locations tied to a Kremlin critic. The recruiter allegedly walked the operative through the surveillance step by step.
Prosecutors say the instructions were precise: put the phone into airplane mode, start recording before entering the neighborhood, slow down while passing the target's home, and delete the messages afterward. The recruit completed the surveillance but refused to carry out the killing himself.
The network then went looking for other recruits inside the United States, according to prosecutors, who say the conspirators noted they also had "people in Mexico" available for the job.
Court documents describe a conspiracy that leaned on classic tradecraft and coded language to mask its purpose. The alleged assassination was referred to as "construction," while the surveillance was described as "measuring a plot of land."
The Washington plot was part of a broader Russian intelligence campaign that prosecutors say has operated since at least 2024. The indictment accuses members of the network of supporting attacks on civilian and military infrastructure in Europe and of conducting surveillance of Russian dissidents abroad.
Investigators also say the network recruited a U.S. citizen in 2025 to surveil and murder a target in Lithuania. Western governments have repeatedly accused Russia of targeting political opponents and defectors beyond its borders, most infamously in the 2018 Novichok poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England. Moscow has denied those allegations.
The case fits a pattern of Russian covert activity that U.S. and allied forces have confronted repeatedly, including a foiled effort to sever undersea cables in Arctic waters that NATO navies stopped cold this spring.
Prosecutors named five alleged members of what they call the Russian Intelligence Services Network. They include Yuri Khrameev, a former Russian intelligence colonel known as "Colonel Yuri," and his son, Kirill Khrameev, an officer in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).
Also charged are Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban national living in Russia whom prosecutors describe as coordinating attacks for the network, along with Yaidel Delgado Suarez, known as "Viking," and Angel Eduardo Castro.
All five face conspiracy to finance terrorism charges that carry up to 20 years in prison. Khrameev, Suarez and Castro also face conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire charges. None of the defendants is in U.S. custody.
Fugitives in Russia are unlikely to see the inside of an American courtroom soon, so the immediate significance of the case is what it reveals about the reach of Moscow's covert apparatus. The indictment paints a network that treated assassination as a paid errand, with recruits scouted in the United States, Europe and Latin America and funding routed through intermediaries.
Expect the Justice Department to use the case to justify fresh sanctions and visa restrictions on the individuals named, and watch for additional charges as investigators chase the recruits and financiers who have not yet been named. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have already seized on Russian covert operations as grounds for tightening measures against Moscow.
The White House, fresh off a hard-charging stretch of foreign policy wins, now has a concrete intelligence case to point to when it argues that the United States must treat Russian intelligence networks as an active threat inside the homeland, not just across the Atlantic. The clearest next step to watch is whether the administration converts the indictment into new penalties on the network's enablers abroad.
The Justice Department unsealed charges Tuesday against five alleged members of a Russian intelligence-directed network accused of orchestrating a $40,000 murder-for-hire plot against a Kremlin critic living in Washington, D.C. All five defendants remain at large.
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