Russia plotted to assassinate Garry Kasparov and former lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev in US, Spanish media reports
A network of Russian intelligence agents plotted to assassinate former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev and chess champion and activist Garry Kasparov, Spanish newspaper El Mundo has reported.
According to the paper, US authorities warned Kasparov this summer that operatives linked to Russian security services wanted to kill him. He was given a security detail for the first time since moving to New York.
The plot against Ponomarev was reportedly at an “even more advanced stage”, but the person tasked with carrying it out “backed out”, El Mundo wrote.
Russian intelligence also planned a killing in Vilnius, in which the victim would have been ambushed and either stabbed or doused with gasoline and set on fire, according to journalists. The target may have been opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Agents also surveilled Ivan Tyutrin, a co-founder of the Free Russian Forum, and Ruslan Gabbasov, a Bashkir activist and founder of the Committee of the Bashkir National Movement Abroad, in Lithuania, according to El Mundo.
In mid-September, the US Justice Department charged five members of a network that had allegedly been preparing since 2024 to kill Russian dissidents in the US and Europe and to carry out sabotage attacks in countries allied with Ukraine.
The defendants include Yury Khrameev, a former colonel in Russia’s security services; his son Kirill Khrameev, an FSB officer; Cuban nationals Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez; and Venezuelan national Angel Eduardo Castro.
US prosecutors say that in summer 2026, members of the network instructed a US-based man to surveil a Russian dissident they believed was in Washington. He sent them photos and video but turned down an offer of $40,000 to kill the dissident.
In 2025 another US citizen was allegedly paid $200 to photograph the address of a man the network accused of “lying about Russia”. Yury Khrameev offered him roughly $25,000 to kill the man. After he refused, Khrameev suggested he set fire to a warehouse or attack an electrical substation instead.
