Russian Intelligence has crossed a red line that for decades was considered unbreakable. For the first time in the documented history of the covert conflict between Moscow and the West, the US Department of Justice has unveiled a formal indictment against a network of Russian intelligence services that planned to assassinate dissidents and opponents directly on US soil. Not in London, not in Salisbury, not in Berlin or the Baltic countries: in Washington D.C.
Read more The useless banner for the truth of Ceuta
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced it yesterday in the Rose Garden of the White House with a phrase that sums up the scope of what was discovered: these defendants operated as part of “a global assassination network that reached the United States”, attempting to recruit American and foreign citizens “to carry out executions on behalf of the Kremlin”.
What the FBI has dismantled over the past few months is not a classic intelligence operation with agents trained by Russia and fake passports. It is something more disturbing: a decentralized network that subcontracts political assassinations as if they were commercial services, with fixed prices, local recruits, and chains of intermediaries designed to keep Moscow as far away as possible from the crime scene. It is, on an even more worrying scale, what the Kremlin already does in Europe with its hybrid sabotage campaign.
“Market” assassinations
Investigator Christo Grozev, co-founder of Bellingcat and one of the world’s leading experts on Russian covert operations—he was the one who identified the GRU agents responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury—describes it as follows: “It is a market with investors from Moscow.” The instruction the organizers gave to their recruits sums it all up: “You need to approach it creatively.”
According to the indictment unveiled in the Southern District Court of New York, the network operated with a chain of intermediaries of various nationalities. Russian intelligence officers used Cuban and Venezuelan citizens based in Russia to recruit a Venezuelan based in the US to surveil and prepare the assassination of a Russian opposition figure living in Washington, as Grozev describes. The operative recruited to carry out the assassination was Venezuelan Ángel Eduardo Castro, who at the end of July contacted a compatriot residing in Brooklyn and tasked him with surveilling the properties associated with the Russian dissident they intended to kill, promising him between $1,000 and $1,500 for filming the premises and a confirmation gesture on video: a thumbs up.
Once the images were received, the price increased: $40,000 to eliminate or make the target disappear. When the recruit declined to personally carry out the assassination, his Russian handlers asked him if he could find someone willing to do it, mentioning that they had contacts in Mexico who were delayed.
They are not “illegals”
This is a different system from the “illegals” Russia has used in the US for decades. An illegal is an agent who operates abroad without any diplomatic cover and under a completely false identity built from scratch over years. Unlike agents under official cover (diplomats and embassy officials with immunity), illegals have no safety net: if they are caught, Moscow can completely deny they are its agents. They are the most expensive and valuable investment of Russian intelligence services.
In this case, to avoid FBI surveillance, the operatives used a code in their communications. Grozev, who has had access to the documents, only points out that it was the word “unbreakable”.
The indictment identifies five men, all whereabouts unknown. The three main ones are Yuri Khrameev, a 63-year-old former colonel of the Russian intelligence services, nicknamed Combat Yuri in intercepted communications—who according to Grozev boasted of having worked with Vladimir Putin when they were young; his son Kiril Khrameev, an active officer of the Russian FSB, heir to the Soviet KGB; and Cuban Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, an influential member of the Cuban diaspora residing in Russia. The other two accused are Cuban Yaidel Delgado Suárez, described by the Department of Justice as an expert recruiter, and Venezuelan Ángel Eduardo Castro, who was to become the executor.
Grozev points out the most serious element of the whole case: this is the first fully documented attempt by Russian intelligence to assassinate someone on US territory. With all due respect to the famous TV series The Americans, there has always been an unwritten rule not to carry out assassinations on the other’s territory. Clearly, the old rules no longer apply in today’s world.
This break is not an accident but a pattern. The same logic that has led Russia to attack European airports with drones, systematically bomb Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, or use drones against civilians in Kherson is behind this operation: the rules that structured the conflict between powers have disappeared one by one, and no one is replacing them.
The network was also preparing a separate plot against an anti-war Russian activist residing in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a price of $25,000, according to Grozev. The market for political assassinations on behalf of the Kremlin has different rates depending on the location and profile of the target. What does not vary is the method: outsourcing, decentralizing, and keeping Moscow far enough away to be able to deny everything.
