Russia Tried to Assassinate Dissident in US, Breaking Post-Cold War Taboo: Report

Court documents reveal that Russian intelligence agencies made an unusual attempt to assassinate a Russian dissident on U.S. soil, the British daily The Guardian reported on September 20 (local time).

The Guardian noted that U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies have maintained a kind of gentleman's agreement since the U.S.-Soviet Cold War era not to carry out assassinations in each other's territory, and this unwritten rule has now been broken by this incident.

According to The Guardian report and an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed charges on September 15 against five individuals, including Yuri Hrameyev, 63, a former colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), and his son Kirill Hrameyev, 27, an active-duty FSB officer, on charges of financing terrorism and conspiring to commit murder-for-hire.

Even though prosecutors have yet to take the five suspects into custody, the U.S. Department of Justice took the unusual step of issuing a press release to make the charges public.

Belonging to a Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) network, they are accused of plotting assassinations and sabotage targeting Russian dissidents and countries supporting Ukraine around the world.

Prosecutors determined that they specifically recruited a Venezuelan national living in Brooklyn, New York, last July to surveil and assassinate a prominent Russian dissident living in Washington, D.C.

While the U.S. Department of Justice did not disclose the real name of the individual, The Guardian reported that the assassination target is known to be Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Kara-Murza, a former journalist, was released from prison in Russia in 2024 through a prisoner exchange program with the United States.

Prosecutors explained that Hrameyev and the others offered 40,000 dollars to the Venezuelan national in exchange for assassinating the dissident living in the U.S., but he rejected the assassination proposal.

The Guardian noted that it is almost unprecedented for Russian intelligence agencies to plot an assassination on U.S. soil.

Russian intelligence operatives have not carried out assassination operations on the U.S. mainland, and U.S. intelligence agencies have also observed similar rules on Russian soil, according to The Guardian.

Such an implicit gentleman's agreement has lasted for a long time since the Cold War period, and the Justice Department's indictment can be seen as a sign that Russia has recently broken this taboo.

Christopher Costa, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and executive director of the International Spy Museum, told The Guardian, "The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in aggressive espionage against each other, but there were implicit boundaries in certain areas," adding, "If the allegations of directing surveillance and assassination on U.S. territory are proven true, it is very different from traditional espionage and crosses a line."

Natalia Arno, president of the Free Russia Foundation, also said, "We thought the Kremlin would not dare commit such a bold act on U.S. soil, but now the game has changed."

Observations point out that it is also unusual for the U.S. Department of Justice to suddenly make public the indictment of this case without even securing the custody of the suspects.

Regarding the timing of the U.S. unsealing of the indictment, Nikki Lyubarsky, a researcher at the U.S. counterterrorism research organization The Soufan Center, said, "It coincides with the time when the House of Representatives passed anti-Russia sanctions and the CIA director visited Russia, and some kind of escalation that we do not know about may be underway behind the scenes," adding, "It could be Russia's intelligence sharing with Iran."
 
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※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.