Russian intelligence agencies oversaw a series of surveillance and assassination plots targeting dissidents in the United States and Europe, US authorities charged, adding to a growing number of warnings about Russian spy operations in the West.
The allegations, detailed in a new federal indictment, were also the latest warning from Western officials detailing how Russia increasingly uses people not trained as professional spies --- sometimes unwittingly -- to carry out operations.
Among the five people charged in the indictment unveiled late on September 15: a father and son linked to Russia's Federal Security Service: Kirill Khrameyev, identified as a colonel in the agency, known as the FSB; his father, Yury, identified as a retired FSB officer.
Three others -- two Cuban men named Oemis Durruthy and Yaidel Suarez and a Venezuelan man Angel Castro -- were also charged. Durruthy lives in Russia, the US Justice Department said in a statement. The whereabouts of the two others are unclear.
According to the indictment, as recently as this summer, Castro, who had been living in Brooklyn, New York, was hired to surveil a prominent Russian dissident who was living in Washington, D.C.
The Russian dissident is not identified in the court filings.
The person was sent to two addresses and given “explicit instructions on how to conduct surveillance,” authorities said. In exchange, the person was promised $1,000 and $1,500 to carry out the surveillance.
The person then allegedly sent photographs to one of the FSB officers, who then later offered $40,000 to the person to “eliminate” or “disappear” the dissident.
After the person declined the offer, the FSB officers allegedly sought out others in the United States to carry out the murder plot.
In another incident detailed in the indictment, an American man living in Lithuania traveled to Estonia, to the border with Russia on June 25, 2025.
There, he met Khrameyev who allegedly offered to pay the man an unspecified amount to return to Vilnius and take photographs of an address where a “bad guy” who was “telling lies about Russia" lived.
The person was paid $200 for the surveillance. The person was then put in touch with Khrameyev’s father, Yury, who allegedly offered him $25,000 to kill the person because he was "spreading dirt about my country" and "telling the media and the common people that the Russians are the aggressors."
Khrameyev also explained how the killing could take place, including "throwing a bottle of gasoline" or "sticking a knife" in the person," according to the court filing.
After the person declined, Yury Khrameyev allegedly proposed he could set fire to a warehouse or electrical substation for an unspecified amount of money.
Khrameyev allegedly wrote to the man, saying he was offering "serious money for serious work," and he was interested in targeting pro-Ukrainian countries, according to the indictment.
The group was also accused of a plot to set fire to buses in the Czech Republic. Durruthy, US authorities said, enlisted a Colombian man, who allegedly tried to burn public buses in the capital, Prague.
After the man's arrest, the Czech prime minister said the plot was "very likely" organized by Russian authorities.
The FSB had no immediate comment on the charges.
Neither Yury nor Kirill Khrameyev could be reached for comment either.
Photographs posted by Kirill Khrameyev to the Russian social media platform VK show him posing at a St. Petersburg academy graduation ceremony, alongside his father.
The indictment includes extensive quoted material taken from chat messages, as well as photographs, that were exchanged between the Khrameyevs and their contacts.
It does not specify how the material was gathered, but in past years, US authorities have used search warrants to access cloud-based storage services -- for example Apple's iCloud, or Google Drive -- to obtain backed-up files, including things like WhatsApp chat logs.
Other plots have been uncovered by authorities accessing Google Translate files stored online, according to the investigative website The Insider.
