The Kremlin treats the US as a combat zone for its hit squads
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
The Justice Department isn’t just filing indictments; it’s sketching a map of a global hit squad.
The Justice Department has unsealed a map of a global hit squad. In Manhattan this week, the DOJ named five suspects, exposing a state-sponsored machine that treats American streets and European capitals as the Kremlin’s private killing fields.
This is a professionalized operation to erase anyone who dares disagree with a dictator. Reporting from NPR and the BBC identifies the architects: former Russian intelligence colonel Yuri Khrameev and his son, Kirill Khrameev, a suspected FSB officer. They recruited Cuban nationals Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, and Venezuelan national Angel Eduardo Castro, to murder dissidents and sabotage NATO infrastructure.
These are not plot points in a novel; they are the line items of a murder ledger. Suarez and Castro tried to buy a Brooklyn resident’s betrayal, offering $40,000 to surveil and "eliminate" a Russian dissident. In Lithuania, the Khrameevs put a price on a critic’s life, with Yuri offering $25,000 to "stick a knife" or "throw a bottle of gasoline" at a man for "spreading dirt" about Russia.
The Family Business of State-Sponsored Murder
Yuri and Kirill Khrameev have turned state murder into a family legacy. This is a generational hand-off of the tools of repression. While other parents teach their children to build, Yuri taught Kirill how to dismantle human lives.
The DOJ’s evidence exposes the calculated shield of "deniability." By hiring Cuban and Venezuelan nationals like Durruthy, Suarez, and Castro, the Russian apparatus attempted to insulate the Kremlin from its own crimes. Durruthy, identified by DW as a salsa teacher in Russia, coordinated the travel and cryptocurrency payments for attacks in Prague and Poland. This is the same cowardice Russia deployed during the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, where "little green men" seized territory without insignia while Moscow pretended not to see.
The money and instructions—the encrypted apps, the Polish hotel bookings, the $1,000 surveillance fees—reveal a predatory pattern: the powerful exploit the marginalized to do their dirty work. They didn't recruit diplomats; they recruited people they believed the world would not miss.
A Blueprint Written in Polonium and Nerve Agents
This is the current chapter of a long, bloody record. The spine of this strategy is the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning. In 2006, the Russian state didn't just kill a former agent; they broadcast a warning that no matter how far you flee, the FSB can find you and put a radioactive isotope in your tea.
The method remains the same: mark a "traitor," outsource the violence to intelligence operatives, and execute the hit on foreign soil to signal total impunity. The Skripal poisoning in 2018 used Novichok in a quiet English town to send that same message. The current plots in Brooklyn and Lithuania are the 2026 version of that signal.
The target is not just the dissident; the target is the very concept of safety. When Yuri Khrameev told his recruits he was "interested in all the countries that are helping Ukraine," he wasn't gathering intelligence. He was directing the 2023 Russian intelligence activities in Europe—the arson, the sabotage, the hybrid war designed to crush anyone who obstructs imperial ambition.
The Lie That Deniability is a Defense
The Kremlin now deploys its standard lie. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow wouldn't comment without "tangible facts," dismissing these assassination plots as fabrications.
This is the Kremlin’s only defense: claim the U.S. is manufacturing a narrative to justify sanctions or military aid. They want this framed as political theater, a clash of narratives where "truth" is a matter of administration.
But that lie collapses under granular evidence. The DOJ isn't citing "intelligence sources"; they are citing encrypted messages, specific surveillance addresses, and cryptocurrency transfers. You do not fabricate a salsa teacher in Russia booking hotels in the Czech Republic for a hit squad. The pattern is too consistent, the methods too refined, and the history too blood-soaked.
Attorney General Todd Blanche claims the government is stopping "violence and terror on American soil." But the real danger is not just the five men currently at large. The danger is the lie that this behavior is a "routine" part of international relations.
We are normalizing the hit squad. To accept the "both sides" framing—to call this "espionage" or "diplomatic tension"—is to ignore that the Kremlin has designated the United States a combat zone. Recruiting foreign nationals to murder people in Brooklyn is a direct assault on the rule of law.
Russia has decided the world is its killing field. The only thing that stops a predator is a wall it cannot climb. This is not about "intelligence" or "national security" in the abstract; it is about whether a dissident can walk down a street in D.C. or Brooklyn without a price tag on their head. The Kremlin is betting we are too distracted or too tired to care. They are wrong.