Garry Kasparov and associate warned of assassination threat following US indictment of Russian agents

Garry Kasparov and associate warned of assassination threat following US indictment of Russian agents

Former world chess champion and prominent Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov announced Thursday that United States and Lithuanian security services have warned him and his longtime associate Ivan Tyutrin that their lives are in danger and urged them to take precautionary measures.

The 63-year-old Kasparov, who became the youngest undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at age 22 by defeating Anatoly Karpov and held the title until 2000, revealed the threat in a social media statement.

News that I, along with my longtime associate and co-founder of the Free Russia Forum, Ivan Tyutrin, are on a list of assassination targets did not come as a surprise to me, but it is nevertheless a shock. I did exactly that, and I will continue to do so in the future.

The warning follows a mid-September announcement by the US Department of Justice charging five alleged Russian intelligence agents with conspiring to carry out attacks and murders around the world, including in the United States. The indictment charges FSB officer Kirill Khrameev and his father Yuri Khrameev, a 63-year-old former colonel in Russian intelligence services, among the five defendants. The group attempted to murder a prominent Russian dissident living in the United States this summer, identified only as "Victim-1" in the indictment. One defendant is an officer of Russia's FSB security service.

Escalating threats against dissidents

Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported Wednesday, citing sources close to Kasparov, that Russian agents had plotted to murder him as well as former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomarev, who was the only member of Russia's State Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, casting the sole dissenting vote in a 445-1 tally.

Neither Ivan nor I were explicitly told that we were the individuals whose names are concealed in the indictment against those accused of carrying out the assassination plot,

Kasparov stated. However, the timing and nature of the security warnings suggest a direct connection to the ongoing investigation.

Tyutrin, who lives in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, told Agence France-Presse that he did not know if he was "Victim-2" mentioned in the indictment. He said Lithuania warned him after the US announcement that

I needed to leave my home urgently and get rid of my car.

In February 2024, Tyutrin was included in Russia's Rosfinmonitoring List of Extremists and Terrorists, and in April 2024 he was arrested in absentia on charges of organizing terrorist activities.

The alleged plot also targeted an individual in Lithuania, with court documents revealing that one of the Russian agents offered a US citizen $25,000 to kill "Victim-2," suggesting murder methods including throwing a bottle of gasoline or using a knife.

Free Russia Forum under siege

In 2016, Kasparov and Tyutrin founded the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the organization holds conferences twice a year. The forum advocates support for the Ukrainian military and organizes anti-war conferences. Russia designated the forum an "undesirable organization" in 2023. In August 2025, Russia's FSB further escalated its persecution by designating the Free Russia Forum as a "terrorist" organization.

Pattern of transnational operations

The alleged assassination plot represents a marked escalation both in the targeting of dissidents and the reach of Russian operations on Western soil. While Russian security services have repeatedly targeted Kremlin opponents across Europe, including the 2006 polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London and the 2018 Novichok nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, the United States has remained off-limits for decades.

Several European countries, including Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, have accused Russia of conducting sabotage and assassination operations on their soil since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Western intelligence officials have reported that Russia has escalated assassination attempts in Europe by increasingly using criminal proxies and hired operatives rather than traditional intelligence agents, particularly following mass expulsions of Russian spies from European countries.

The US Department of Justice's indictment appears to confirm this shift in tactics, potentially marking a new chapter in Russia's campaign against dissidents abroad.