Russian Authorities Were Planning The Assassination Of Garry Kasparov And Other Opposition Figures
- 30.09.2026, 10:17
The assassination attempt was supposed to take place in the United States.
For several months, Russian authorities had been planning the assassinations of opposition figures Garry Kasparov and Ilya Ponomarev on U.S. soil. This was reported by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
In the summer of 2026, U.S. authorities warned Kasparov that he had become the target of an assassination attempt. According to sources close to him, he was assigned a security detail for the first time since moving to New York in 2013. According to the publication, preparations for Ponomarev’s assassination had gone even further.
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked down a group of five people who were acting on Moscow’s orders and recruiting operatives for surveillance and assassinations. One of the recruited agents photographed two locations in Washington, D.C., linked to Ponomarev; he was promised between $1,000 and $1,500 for taking those photos. A reward of $40,000 was offered for the assassination itself. The assassination attempt failed because the hitman changed his mind and refused the assignment.
In addition, another murder was planned, this time in Vilnius: the plan was to lie in wait for the victim and either stab him to death or set him on fire after dousing him with gasoline. The man’s name is not mentioned in the materials. Journalists speculate that the target may have been Vladimir Kara-Murza, but they do not provide any supporting details.
Two members of the group allegedly paid a U.S. citizen about $200 for a photo of the address where the Russian opposition figure lived in Vilnius. According to El Mundo, since 2024 the group had been monitoring the co-founder of the “Free Russia Forum,” Ivan Tyutrin, who was already under protection at that time. In recent months, the police had again warned him of the threat. However, the case files do not specify whether he was the intended target in Vilnius. A bounty of $25,000 had been offered for this murder.
The list of potential targets also includes Bashkir activist Ruslan Gabbasov, founder of the “Committee of the Bashkir National Movement Abroad.” In 2025, he discovered a GPS tracker on his car, and later the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office uncovered a plot to assassinate him. In April 2026, Delfi reported that a 55-year-old man had been detained in Greece on suspicion of plotting a double murder in Lithuania; one of the victims could have been Gabbasov, and he himself confirmed that Lithuanian intelligence services had foiled the assassination attempt.