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The Justice Department unsealed charges against five alleged Russian intelligence operatives accused of running a global assassination network, including a plot this summer to kill a dissident whom investigators say the network believed was residing just outside Washington, D.C.
- Prosecutors say Suarez, a Cuban national, and Castro, who is Venezuelan, ran the recruitment from inside Russia, reaching out to a Venezuelan immigrant settled in Brooklyn to handle surveillance and later look for someone willing to carry out the killing.
- That recruit was offered between $1,000 and $1,500 for surveillance footage and up to $40,000 to make the target vanish, yet he refused to pull the trigger himself.
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A strikingly similar scheme unfolded in 2025 in Lithuania, where a U.S. citizen pocketed $200 for photographing a dissident's home before turning down a $25,000 offer to kill him.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused five people tied to Russian intelligence services of running an assassination operation with reach into several countries, one that this year allegedly extended to the outskirts of the U.S. capital, according to an indictment made public Tuesday by federal prosecutors in New York. All five defendants remain at large and are presumed innocent unless convicted.
Who the DOJ Says Is Behind the RIS Network
Prosecutors describe the group as the RIS Network, an arm of Russian intelligence active since at least 2024. Its most senior figure, per the 17-page indictment, is Yuri Khrameev, known as Colonel Yuri, 63, identified as a former colonel in Russian intelligence. His 27-year-old son, Kirill Khrameev, holds a post with Russia's FSB security service. Three other men round out the network, described by prosecutors as recruiters and logistics handlers: Cuban national Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, 35, a prominent figure among Cuban expatriates in Russia; fellow Cuban Yaidel Delgado Suarez, 35, who goes by the alias Viking; and 22-year-old Venezuelan Angel Eduardo Castro. Court filings place both Suarez and Castro inside Russian territory throughout the communications laid out in the case.
The $40,000 Offer That Started With a Message to Brooklyn
The plot against the Washington-area target began, according to the indictment, on July 29, 2026, when Castro reached out over an encrypted app to a Venezuelan national who had settled in the Brooklyn borough of New York, asking whether he knew someone in Washington he trusted. Castro relayed an audio clip attributed to Suarez asking for images of an address tied to a prominent dissident, dangling $1,000 to $1,500 for the footage. The New Yorker agreed to capture the images but made clear he would not carry out a killing on his own.
Over the following weeks, Suarez pushed the recruit to line up someone else for the job, mentioning associates in Mexico who were running behind schedule. Court papers say the coordinates for the target traced back to Yuri Khrameev and reached the recruit through Suarez, who ultimately received several surveillance clips of two addresses tied to the dissident before the plan stalled. The office's top prosecutor, Jamie McDonald, called the wider network "brazen, aggressive, and far-reaching." Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters the case involved "a Russian dissident believed to be living in the Washington, DC area."
A Near-Identical Blueprint Tested a Year Earlier in Lithuania
The Washington-area case was not the network's first run at this kind of scheme, prosecutors say. In 2025, Kirill Khrameev crossed paths with a U.S. citizen along the border separating Estonia from Russia and offered him money to photograph an address in Vilnius, Lithuania. Once the American sent back pictures for a $200 payment, Kirill Khrameev put him in touch with his father, introduced only as a colonel and a boss, who dangled roughly $25,000 to kill the man living there, describing him as someone spreading falsehoods about Russia. Investigators say the elder Khrameev floated gasoline or a blade as possible methods. When the recruit passed, he pivoted to what he called an easier assignment: burning down a storage facility or striking an electrical substation in a country backing Ukraine.
Coordinated Attacks in Prague and Lithuania
Court papers also connect Durruthy to two earlier European operations. In June 2024, he financed and arranged travel for an associate behind what prosecutors describe as a failed arson attempt in Prague, a claim Czechia's government has echoed by calling the attack very likely Russian-funded. Three months later, Durruthy helped organize a sabotage operation at a Lithuanian plant that builds mobile radio gear for Ukraine's armed forces, an attack Lithuanian officials say was ordered by, and carried out to benefit, Russia's military-intelligence agency, the GRU. By November 2025, per the indictment, Durruthy had also obtained imagery of one of the Washington-area dissident's residences, material that later matched footage sent by the Brooklyn recruit.
Charges, Denials and a Kremlin Brush-Off
All five defendants face a single terrorism-financing conspiracy count, punishable by up to 20 years behind bars. Suarez, Castro, and the elder Khrameev alone face a second, separate count for conspiring to arrange a murder for hire, adding a potential decade on top. National security prosecutor John Eisenberg said the scheme amounted to a serious breach of American sovereignty and vowed continued pursuit of the network and anyone who helped it operate.
Pressed for a response, the Kremlin's Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing that "we do not consider it necessary to comment on this news" absent concrete proof. Wire reporting noted Moscow has for years rejected claims that it runs such operations beyond its own borders.
Part of a Broader Pattern, Prosecutors Say
The indictment frames the Washington-area plot as the newest entry in a long list of killings and poisonings that U.S. and allied governments have linked to Russian intelligence over roughly two decades, pointing to journalist Paul Klebnikov's 2004 murder in Moscow, the 2006 polonium poisoning of ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London, the 2018 nerve-agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal, and opposition figure Alexei Navalny's 2024 death inside a Russian prison. Prosecutors argue the RIS Network fits that same pattern, only now with a foothold in American neighborhoods.
