Russia plotting to kill Ukraine allies in US and Europe, FBI says

Russia’s intelligence services are plotting to carry out targeted killings in the United States and in European nations supporting Ukraine, federal authorities said Tuesday as they announced charges against five people who remain at large.

An indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court said a network of the intelligence services had paid and attempted to pay individuals in the United States and in other countries to surveil targets to be killed with plans to then kill them.

The associates recruited in the network also had been solicited to carry out acts of terrorism against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries that were perceived to be aligned with Ukraine, the indictment said.

James Barnacle Jr, head of New York’s FBI office, said the FBI disrupted the plans “through relentless work” as members of the Russian intelligence services and their affiliates “conspired to intimidate, threaten, or murder people on US soil and around the world”.

Darren Cox, head of the Washington DC office of the FBI, cited “extraordinary work by multiple FBI field offices, components, and partner agencies that collectively disrupted Russia’s attempts to conduct violent acts in our nation’s capital and throughout the United States”.

He said in a release that when the threat was first identified, the FBI’s Washington field office and its partners “moved quickly to disrupt the plot and hold the Russian government accountable for its actions”.

According to the release, a network of people working for the Russian Federation’s intelligence services had since at least 2024 conspired to conduct and had conducted attacks and murders around the world, including within the United States.

It called the Russian intelligence services network “one arm” of the Russian Federation’s apparatus designed to carry out external attacks, including murder, around the world.

Previously, the release said, the network had focused on Russian dissidents and defectors but most recently had targeted nations perceived to be allies of Ukraine.

Recently, it said, members of the network had tried to recruit multiple people in the United States.

Authorities said the network this summer recruited an individual based in the United States to surveil and murder a prominent Russian dissident it believed to be residing in the United States.

The indictment said a person identified only as “US Resident-1” had been sent to two locations associated with the targeted victim and was given “explicit instructions on how to conduct surveillance” while being promised $1,000 and $1,500 to carry out the work.

After conducting the surveillance and providing multiple photographs and videos of locations associated with the intended victim to one of the men charged in the indictment, the US resident turned down the $40,000 that was offered to “eliminate” or “disappear” the target through murder.

When the offer was rejected, the member of the intelligence services who had made it tried to recruit multiple other people within the United States to do the job by offering them substantial amounts of money, the indictment said.