US charges five in Kremlin-backed assassination network spanning US and Europe

U.S. prosecutors charged five individuals linked to a Kremlin-backed “global assassination network” with surveilling and plotting murder-for-hire in the United States and Lithuania, and targeting European infrastructure. The defendants—Russian nationals Yuri and Kirill Khrameev, Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, Yaidel Delgado Suarez, and Angel Eduardo Castro—are accused of conspiring to finance terrorism and, for some, murder-for-hire. The RIS network, active since at least 2024, allegedly recruited U.S.-based associates and offered tens of thousands of dollars to kill dissidents; all five suspects remain at large. The case is presented as a rare public example of Kremlin-backed assassination plots on American soil, amid broader concerns about foreign terrorist activity in the West.