Iranian plot to attack Western targets

US prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging five people -- Russian national Yuri Khrameev (a former Russian intelligence colonel), his son Kirill Khrameev (an FSB officer), Cuban nationals Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, and Venezuelan Angel Eduardo Castro -- with running a Russian-intelligence-linked network that financed terrorism and coordinated surveillance and assassination plots against Kremlin critics, with all five still at large. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the alleged plots included an attempt to kill a Russian dissident believed to live near Washington, DC: prosecutors say a recruited Venezuelan operative filmed two DC-area locations tied to the target and was offered $40,000 to carry out the killing, but declined after completing only the surveillance.

The indictment describes the network using coded language -- calling an assassination 'construction' and surveillance 'measuring a plot of land' -- and says it had separately offered a US citizen roughly $25,000 to kill a different Kremlin critic in Lithuania, later pivoting toward sabotage plots against infrastructure such as electrical substations and warehouses in countries supporting Ukraine after that recruit also refused. Officials called it one of the more serious publicly disclosed Russian intelligence operations targeting someone on US soil, describing an active campaign dating back to at least 2024; Russia's embassy has not commented, and Moscow has consistently denied orchestrating assassination operations abroad.