DOJ Indicts Russian operatives for terror financing and assassination plots

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Tuesday that an indictment has been unsealed in the Southern District of New York charging multiple Russian citizens with financing terrorism and conspiring to commit murder plots worldwide.

Speaking at a White House Rose Garden press conference, Blanche revealed that the alleged group, identified in court documents as the “RIS Network,” worked for Russian intelligence services. The indictment specifically details efforts to locate and kill a Russian dissident believed to be living in the Washington, D.C., area.

According to prosecutors, the network has been active since 2024, tracking and surveilling Russian dissidents in the United States and Europe while coordinating terrorist attacks against military and civilian infrastructure in European nations aligned with Ukraine. The charges also allege attempts to recruit individuals within the U.S. to carry out these attacks abroad.

The five defendants named in the indictment include three high-ranking members and two recruiters. The alleged senior operatives are Yuri Khrameev, formerly a colonel in Russian intelligence; his son Kirill Khrameev, an officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service; and Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban national residing in Russia who allegedly coordinated the group’s attacks.

The remaining two defendants, Yaidel Delgado Suarez and Angel Eduardo Castro, are accused of serving as recruiters for the operation. Delgado Suarez, known by the alias “Viking,” is specifically alleged to have recruited a Venezuelan citizen living in the U.S. during the summer of 2026 to conduct surveillance and murder the prominent Russian dissident.

Prosecutors stated that encrypted messaging communications between the group members included detailed instructions on how to conduct surveillance and arrangements for payment related to the murder-for-hire scheme.