FBI: five people charged with Russian espionage in the United States

Five people are accused of having worked for Russian intelligence in the United States, organising targeted killings and various terrorist acts both within the country and around the world. Today, the US Department of Justice issued a statement identifying the suspects and describing some of their activities in detail.

The five individuals are part of a network, identified as the ‘Ris network’, which has been operational since 2024. Initially, the article states, the organisation was involved in recruiting US residents and citizens to monitor and subsequently kill Russian dissidents and defectors in the country. More recently, however, the network appears to have expanded its scope of operations, using its recruits to carry out terrorist attacks against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries that support, or are accused by Moscow of supporting, Ukraine.

Among the five accused are reportedly three leaders of the network: the former Russian military officer Yuri Khrameev (known as ‘Colonel Yuri’), his son Kirill, a member of the FSB, and Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, a Cuban national described in the document as an ‘influential member of the Cuban diaspora’. The other two operatives, responsible for recruiting followers, are Yaidel Delgado Suarez, a Cuban national known as ‘Viking’, and Angel Eduardo Castro, a 22-year-old Venezuelan, the network’s youngest member.

The Department of Justice’s press release describes two operations carried out by the cell in detail: in the first, Suarez allegedly approached a man resident in the United States, hiring him to surveil a Russian dissident and provide photos and videos, and subsequently asked him to kill him and dispose of the body. The man reportedly refused. The second operation, meanwhile, involved Khrameev hiring an American citizen to monitor and kill a man in Lithuania. The target, it is stated, was allegedly guilty of “portraying a distorted reality” about Russia.

The espionage network case represents another piece in the hybrid war being waged by Russia against Ukraine’s allies, in which Moscow appears to be testing the targets’ ability to respond. These forms of aggression, recently described as ‘hybrid kinetic attacks’ by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, appear to be increasingly targeting the European countries most exposed on Russia’s flank: the Baltic states, Poland and Romania.

The five members of the Ris network are all charged with conspiracy and financing terrorism, offences punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment. Three of them are also charged with conspiracy to commit contract killings, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The investigations were carried out by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York, in conjunction with the Washington office and the Department of Homeland Security. Todd Blanche, the US Attorney General, stated: “Our job is to prevent America’s enemies from unleashing violence and terror on American soil. And that is exactly what we are doing, thanks to the work of the FBI and the Department of Justice.”