US charges Russian FSB officer, former colonel, and three others with plotting to kill dissidents abroad
US federal prosecutors have announced charges against five people for plotting to assassinate Russian dissidents in the United States and Europe, and to carry out sabotage attacks in countries supporting Ukraine, in a campaign that the Justice Department says began in 2024 or earlier. All five defendants remain at large.
The Justice Department identified three of the individuals as “high-ranking members” of the RIS Network, a unit within the Russian state apparatus responsible for attacks abroad, with a particular focus on Russian dissidents and defectors. Prosecutors identified them as 63-year-old Yuri Khrameev, a former Russian security services colonel known as “Colonel Yuri”; his 27-year-old son Kirill Khrameev, an officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB); and 35-year-old Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban national living in Russia.
Yaidel Delgado Suarez, a 35-year-old Cuban known by the nickname “Viking”, and Angel Eduardo Castro, a 22-year-old Venezuelan national, allegedly served as recruiters.
All five defendants face charges of conspiracy to finance terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Yuri Khrameev, Suarez, and Castro are additionally charged with conspiracy to commit murder for hire, punishable by up to 10 years.
Prosecutors said that in the summer of 2026, network members recruited a person living in the United States to surveil a prominent Russian dissident they believed was in the country. Suarez allegedly sent the recruit two addresses linked to the intended victim and offered between $1,000 and $1,500 for surveillance.
After the recruit supplied photographs and video, Suarez and Castro allegedly offered him $40,000 to “eliminate” or “disappear” the dissident. When the man refused to carry out the killing, he was asked whether he knew anyone who could. Suarez reportedly claimed to have “people in Mexico” who were delayed, and investigators believe he attempted to recruit other people in the US for both surveillance and murder.
In a separate case, prosecutors said that in 2025 Kirill Khrameev recruited a US citizen to surveil a man in Lithuania whom network members described as a “bad guy” who was “telling lies about Russia”. The American was paid $200 to photograph a specified address.
After completing the task, he was introduced to Yuri Khrameev, who allegedly offered him around $25,000 to kill the target, whom he accused of “spreading dirt” about Russia and “distorting history”. Khrameev suggested a knife attack or a bottle of gasoline as possible methods. When the American declined, Kharmeev allegedly proposed a “simpler job” such as setting fire to a warehouse or throwing a gasoline bottle at an electrical substation, telling him that targets should include “every country helping Ukraine”.
According to leaked records reviewed by the independent outlet Agentstvo, Yuri Khrameev was born in Russia’s Tambov region. The records identify him as the first commander of the Northwestern OMON riot police unit and head of a St. Petersburg police detachment deployed to Chechnya.
The same leaks show he was removed from his post as deputy OMON commander in 1994 amid a fraud investigation, but continued serving in Russia’s interior ministry system until at least 2017, including as deputy battalion commander in the St. Petersburg and Leningrad region police directorate until at least 2011. From September 2023 to June 2025, he headed a private security firm called Tornado.
Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a dual Russian-Cuban citizen who reportedly taught Latin American dance in Petrozavodsk, has previously been named in media reports as a participant in a GRU agent network in Europe and linked to alleged sabotage plots in Lithuania.