The Justice Department is accusing several members of Russia’s intelligence services of running a “global assassination network” that targeted Kremlin critics — including one alleged murder plot on U.S. soil over the summer.
Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment Tuesday against five people who belonged to what they called the “RIS Network,” including a 63-year-old former Russian intelligence colonel named Yuri Khrameev, his son Kirill, two Cubans and one Venezuelan. All five defendants are believed to live in Russia and remain at large, the Justice Department said.
It marks the latest alleged attempt by a U.S. adversary to crack down on dissidents abroad, including in the United States and NATO-allied countries.
One of the murder-for-hire plots took place in July and August of this year, the indictment says. The Venezuelan operative and one of the Cuban operatives allegedly recruited a Brooklyn resident to take photos and videos of two locations associated with an unnamed Russian dissident, promising him $1,000 to $1,500 to carry out the “gravely serious work.” Another $40,000 was offered to “eliminate” or “disappear” the target of the surveillance.
The operatives believed the Russian dissident lived in the Washington, D.C., area, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.
The Brooklyn resident was willing to take photos, the indictment said, but expressed unwillingness to “do the other stuff” — as in, kill the dissident. The operatives then allegedly asked the Brooklyn resident if he knew of anybody else who was interested.
“Let me know as soon as possible because I have a chain and my boss has questions,” one of the Cuban recruiters wrote, according to the indictment. “I have people in Mexico right now and theyre delayed. I only need a response to know if someone can do the work. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow just need to know if the[y] can.”
The indictment also accuses Yuri Khrameev (or “Colonel Yuri”) and his son of trying to recruit a U.S. citizen in Lithuania to kill somebody who was ostensibly “telling lies about Russia” last year.
The unnamed U.S. citizen met the younger Khrameev at the Estonia-Russia border, where he was asked to take photos of the target’s address, court papers say.
He was paid $200 for the surveillance. Then, Yuri Khrameev allegedly offered him $25,000 to kill the person because he was “spreading dirt about my country” and “telling the media and the common people that the Russians are the aggressors.”
When the U.S. citizen declined to kill the person, Yuri Khrameev allegedly suggested he could instead get paid to set a warehouse or electrical substation on fire. The Russian intelligence officer said he was interested in targeting pro-Ukrainian countries and was offering “serious money for serious work,” according to the indictment.
Members of the RIS Network were also accused of helping facilitate a pair of failed arson attacks in Europe in 2024, including an attempt to set fire to buses in the Czech Republic and a plot against a Lithuanian facility that supplies radio equipment to Ukraine. Both of those attacks had previously drawn media attention, and Lithuanian and Czech officials blamed Russia.
The indictment accuses one of the Cuban defendants of communicating with associates involved in the Lithuanian and Czech attacks and booking hotels and travel for them.
All five of the defendants were charged with terrorism finance conspiracy, and three of them — Yuri Khrameev and the Cuban and Venezuelan operatives linked to the alleged U.S.-based plot over the summer — were charged with murder-for-hire conspiracy.
The U.S. citizen and Brooklyn resident who were allegedly recruited to conduct surveillance of the Russian operatives’ targets weren’t charged or named in the indictment.
In a statement Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg called the alleged plots “a gross violation of our sovereignty and a threat to our national security.”
“These defendants allegedly operated as part of a global assassination network that reached into the United States, attempting to recruit U.S. citizens and foreigners to carry out killings at the behest of the Kremlin,” Eisenberg said, vowing to “stamp out any foreign intelligence services’ attempt to operate freely in our great Nation.”
CBS News has reached out to the Russian Embassy in D.C. for comment.
The Russian government has long been accused of seeking to kill anti-regime figures, in some cases outside Russia’s borders. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny survived a suspected poisoning by a nerve agent in 2020, before recovering in Germany, voluntarily returning to Russia and dying in prison more than two years ago.
Before then, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent in the U.K. in 2018, and KGB agent-turned-Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in the U.K. from a radioactive substance in 2006. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration has long denied any role in poisoning critics.
In recent years, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, NATO states have accused Russia of plotting sabotage attacks and other operations in Europe.
American intelligence agencies assessed over the summer that Putin could be increasingly willing to authorize provocative actions on NATO territory that fall short of a war, with the likely goal of testing the alliance’s unity, CBS News has reported. When CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow and met with Russian officials last month, the topics under discussion included a warning not to attack NATO, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Other U.S. adversaries have also been accused of seeking to crack down on dissidents on American soil. Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad has survived multiple alleged murder and kidnapping attempts, and prosecutors have alleged that agents of the Chinese government operated an illegal “police station” in New York City to monitor and harass dissidents.
