BY ROB WALDECK
Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney James McDonald charged a group of Russian intelligence figures of conspiring to murder a prominent Russian dissident in the United States in an indictment unsealed late Tuesday. The indictment also alleged the Russian cell hired a U.S. citizen to surveil a target living in Vilnius, Lithuania in a separate murder plot. The indictment alleges that the Russians were led by Yuri Khrameev, a retired colonel and agent of the Russian Federal Security Service, known colloquially as the FSB.
According to the indictment, in late July, Angel Eduardo Castro, a Venezuelan man living in Russia contacted a U.S. resident living in Brooklyn, and forwarded a voice mail from a second man, Yaidel Delgado Suarez, a Cuban national living in Russia that offered the U.S. resident between $1,000 and $1,500 to conduct surveillance of the victim in the Washington, DC area. The indictment alleges that Castro forwarded a second voice mail from Suarez that also offered $40,000 to anyone who would murder the dissident. According to the indictment, the Brooklyn man conducted the requested surveillance, but declined to murder the victim. Photographs show that the alleged instructions to the U.S. resident were sent in Spanish. The government also alleges that Suarez told the U.S. resident that he had a team in Mexico that could do the job, but that they were delayed.
The DOJ has not identified the intended target of the murder plot, but the victim’s location in Washington DC suggests that the target may have been prominent Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza. Kara-Murza has been the target of two previous poisoning attempts and lives in the DC area. A request for comment from Free Russia, where Kara-Murza serves as a vice-president, was not returned.
The U.S. also charged Khrameev, Khrameev’s son Kirill Khrameev, Suarez, Castro and a fifth man, Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, identified by Lithuanian prosecutors as a Cuban national, with conspiracy to finance terrorism. According to the indictment, a U.S. citizen met with Kirill Khrameev at the Estonian-Russian border where Khrameev allegedly offered to pay the U.S. citizen to take photographs of an address in Vilnius, Lithuania. According to the indictment Yuri Khrameev then contacted the U.S. citizen, offering $25,000 to kill a “bad guy” at the Vilnius address. The indictment alleges that Khrameev told the U.S. citizen that the target of the plot was telling the media that “the Russians are the aggressors.” Lithuanian press reports identify the proposed victim as Ruslan Gabbasov, a Lithuania-based Russian activist.
The indictment alleges that after the U.S. citizen declined to carry out the murder, Yuri Khrameev offered him other work involving arson attacks against warehouses, electrical substations and military facilities. Khrameev allegedly told the U.S. citizen that he was “interested in all the countries that are helping Ukraine.”
The indictment also alleges that Durruthy financed and directed arson attacks in Czechia, Poland and Lithuania in 2024. In the Czech incident, a Columbian man, Andrés Alfonso de la Hoz de la Cruz was convicted of arson after he tried to set fire to a garage owned by the Prague city transport company. De la Hoz was also charged by Polish authorities in July 2025 with setting two fires at building depots in Poland in May 2024.
Six individuals were charged with a 2024 arson attack in Šiauliai, Lithuania at a manufacturer of mobile radio frequency analyzers. Durruthy, who the Lithuanian press described as a salsa instructor, is being sought by Lithuanian prosecutors but remains at large.