{"id":854103,"date":"2026-09-20T07:32:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T07:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854103\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T07:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T07:32:24","slug":"the-rules-have-changed-has-russia-begun-to-order-assassinations-on-us-soil-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/854103\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The rules have changed\u2019: has Russia begun to order assassinations on US soil? | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roman Dobrokhotov had been content enough for his appearance at a conference in Washington DC<\/a> this week to be publicised, although it was not something he would normally risk in Europe. The dissident Russian journalist was named during a trial in London last year as one of the targets of a Russian spy ring that appeared to have murderous intent.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe burn him alive on the street, spray him with some super-strong acid, VX, like the North Koreans, or the ricin,\u201d a Russian-hired operative had texted of the plans for Dobrokhotov in Britain.<\/p>\n

American soil, though, has traditionally been regarded as something of a safe place for those speaking out against the Kremlin, whether it has been under the red flag of the Soviet Union or the tricolour of Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russian Federation. It might be possible for Kremlin agents to get away with deploying poison-tipped umbrellas on people crossing London\u2019s Waterloo Bridge, as was the fate of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978<\/a>, but risking such colourful assassinations on the Brooklyn Bridge or indeed anywhere on US territory would be a different matter entirely.<\/p>\n

An umbrella similar to the one the KGB used to kill dissident Georgi Markov at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. Photograph: Saul Loeb\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

If not part of the so-called Moscow rules, the fabled operating guidelines for western and Russian spies, then there was certainly an adjunct, a gentleman\u2019s agreement of sorts, that neither side would kill on each other\u2019s soil. That had been the understanding of many of the other dissidents as they prepared to appear at the Washington Dialogue conference on Russian affairs being held in the high-rise office of the National Endowment for Democracy, a short walk from the White House.<\/p>\n

This week the kaleidoscope was shaken. \u201cIt looks like starting from today, the rules have changed in America,\u201d Dobrokhotov, 43, said. \u201cWe will have to change how we behave there. Nowhere is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game changer overshadowing the Washington conference was an announcement on Tuesday that the US Department of Justice was unsealing indictments<\/a> in absentia against five individuals allegedly working for Russia\u2019s intelligence services who were said to have conspired to \u201cconduct attacks and murders around the world, including in the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

The most eye-catching claim was that of an audacious plot to recruit unnamed US residents to \u201celiminate\u201d a prominent Russian dissident living in the US capital. Those named as part of the spy network were a serving officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Kirill Khrameev, 27, and his father, Yuri Khrameev, 63, who is a former FSB colonel, along with two 35-year-old Cubans, Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, nicknamed \u201cthe Viking\u201d, and a 22-year-old Venezuelan, Angel Eduardo Castro.<\/p>\n

Col Yuri Khrameev of the FSB, accused (alongside his son Kirill) of plotting to kill Russian dissidents in the US. Photograph: Twitter XOemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban expat dance instructor was allegedly hired by the FSB to find and kill Russian dissidents in the US. Photograph: VK<\/p>\n

The FBI had uncovered encrypted messages \u2013 written in Spanish and ineptly shrouded in spy code \u2013 commissioning what one of the alleged ring members had described as \u201cgravely serious work\u201d: an offer of $40,000 (\u00a330,000) to surveil and then kill someone in Washington that the Russian state wanted to \u201cdisappear\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was talk of bringing in assassins from Mexico to carry out the \u201cconstruction\u201d (the word used by the agents for murder) but they were \u201cdelayed\u201d and so a local killer was sought, according to the indictment. The identity of the purported victim was not revealed by the authorities, but among the rumoured potential targets was Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was freed from jail in Siberia and went to the US as part of a swap for Russian intelligence operatives<\/a> in 2024. He declined to comment on the case when approached by the Guardian.<\/p>\n

Political activist and former prisoner in Russia Vladimir Kara-Murza in London after the 2024 Ankara prisoner exchange. Photograph: Sophia Evans\/The Observer<\/p>\n

The almost unprecedented nature of the plot on US soil was unintentionally highlighted in the indictment itself, which listed a series of assassinations carried out by the Russian intelligence services. There was Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist and historian, murdered in Moscow in 2004<\/a>. Two years later, Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer, was killed in London by two Russian agents<\/a> who put radioactive material in his tea. In 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter, survived after being poisoned<\/a> with a military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury in the UK; a local woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after being contaminated<\/a>. In 2019, a court in Germany found that Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former commander in the second Chechen war, was assassinated in Berlin<\/a>, on the order of the Russian state. And in 2024 Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, died while in custody<\/a> after being previously poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok<\/a> while outside the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore recently, countries throughout Europe have accused Russia of sabotage operations and extrajudicial targeting,\u201d the indictment goes on. \u201cFor example, in or about September 2026, a German investigation reportedly linked the GRU\u2019s military intelligence services to a drone attack at the Leipzig\/Halle airport<\/a> in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n

German police said explosives experts examined a drone near a runway at Leipzig\/Halle airport in Schkeuditz, Germany in August. Photograph: Axel Schmidt\/Reuters<\/p>\n

But no such activities on US soil were raised in the paperwork, and for historically rooted reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would describe it as an unwritten set of cold-war rules of the road,\u201d said Chris Costa, a former US intelligence chief who is today executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. \u201cThe US and Soviet Union conducted aggressive espionage against one another, but there were understood limits, particularly around physically targeting each other\u2019s intelligence personnel and families \u2026 If these allegations are proved, directing surveillance and murder on US soil crosses a very different line from traditional espionage.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every fortnight<\/p>\n

Sign up to Global Dispatch<\/p>\n

Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features, opinion and photography, curated by our global development team<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A spy swap at Berlin\u2019s Glienicke Bridge AKA the \u2018Bridge of Spies\u2019 during the cold war. Photograph: Ullstein Bild\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Why would the Russians cross this red line? Jack Devine, a former associate director of operations at the CIA, said that the Kremlin had perhaps become blase about the potential repercussions \u2013 but that it could prove to be a misstep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians today put far less weight on political criticism internationally, and are less concerned about the ramifications, including sanctions,\u201d he said. \u201cPutin has a vision of himself in Russia and in the world as a powerful leader of the old school which he has often reminisced about in his interviews and public statements. I believe it\u2019s wrongfooted, and he may be underestimating the long-term internal and external ramifications of this isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Calder Walton, author and assistant director of the Belfer Center\u2019s Intelligence Project at Harvard University, it is not just the Russian motivations that should be analysed. In 2023, Walton revealed in his book Spies that three years earlier a Russian assassination squad had targeted Aleksandr Poteyev, a defector who had been living in the US<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Poteyev episode, American authorities apparently chose secrecy, presumably to protect intelligence sources and methods and avoid a public confrontation with Moscow,\u201d he said. \u201cBy unsealing this indictment, the justice department is doing something different: exposing the alleged network, warning potential recruits, reassuring threatened dissidents and imposing costs on individuals who might otherwise have continued to operate in the shadows. Public attribution is itself a counterintelligence weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

European diplomats in Washington tasked with monitoring the conflict in Ukraine and US-Russian relations also said the exposure of the plot by the FBI indicated a shift in Washington\u2019s position. \u201cIt\u2019s a big deal that the US chose to reveal this now,\u201d one said. \u201cThe decision to do that raises the profile and shows the clear and imminent threat to dissidents in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walton added: \u201cThe immediate policy consequences may be limited because all five defendants are reportedly abroad and remain at large.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should nevertheless expect greater protection for Russian dissidents and defectors, intensified investigation of Russian proxy networks, closer intelligence cooperation with European allies, and potentially further sanctions, expulsions or criminal charges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidence of a heightened state of alert to the risk to dissidents in the US has already emerged. Anastasia Shevchenko, a vocal critic of Putin who fled Russia for Lithuania in 2022 after becoming the first person found guilty of breaking a new law of participating in an \u201cundesirable organisation\u201d, said she had been warned at a recent interview for a visa to the US that she could not assume that she would be safe during her visit.<\/p>\n

Russian journalist and activist Anastasia Shevchenko at a conference of the Russian Antiwar Committee in Strasbourg in May. Photograph: SOPA Images\/LightRocket\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Nikkie Lyubarsky, a research associate at the Soufan Center, an NGO in New York specialising in global security, said the unsealing of the indictment could reflect a \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d escalation in tension between the White House and the Kremlin as a result of Russia\u2019s reported support for Iran in the continuing conflict with the US and Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US publicising [the indictments] now definitely raises some flags in my mind,\u201d said Lyubarsky. \u201cIt coincides obviously with the sanctions that have just been passed in the House<\/a> and the CIA director\u2019s visit to Russia<\/a> recently. There\u2019s probably some sort of escalation behind the scenes that we\u2019re not aware of. It could be tied to Russian intelligence-sharing with Iran. That would be my best guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back at the Washington Dialogue conference, the perhaps understandably conspiratorial-minded dissidents chewing on sandwiches at the lunch break had their own theories. Was Donald Trump seeking to distance himself from the news that the wedding of his son, Donald Trump Jr, had been partly paid for by the Putin loyalist and oligarch Umar Kremlev<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Natalia Arno, the founder and president of the Free Russia Foundation, who experienced symptoms from a suspected poisoning during a 2023 trip<\/a> to Prague that she believes was commissioned by the Kremlin, said that for all the theorising, one thing had changed undeniably. \u201cWe thought the Kremlin wouldn\u2019t be as brazen as to do something on United States soil,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a different landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roman Dobrokhotov had been content enough for his appearance at a conference in Washington DC this week to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-854103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}