Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a political exile living in the United States, said he was warned by U.S. and Lithuanian security services that his life was in danger.
Kasparov told his blog The Next Move that although no official statement identified him as a target, both he and fellow exile Ivan Tyutrin were advised to take precautions.
The comments come after the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment that charges five people, allegedly working for a Kremlin-linked network, with plotting attacks and murders against Russian dissidents and defectors overseas.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that Kasparov and fellow opposition figure Ilya Ponomarev were advised of the plot in the summer, and that enhanced protection had been put in place for the first time since he fled Russia in 2013.
Kasparov stated, “I will not stop and I will not hide, even if I thought it was possible to do so. My family and I will not truly be safe as long as Vladimir Putin is in power in Russia – a circumstance shared by millions.”
Both Kasparov and Ponomarev, who served as the only MP to vote against Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, deny their labels as “foreign agents” or “terrorists” and criticize the Kremlin’s escalating threats.
The Justice Department said the alleged “RIS Network” has been operating since at least 2024, conspiring to conduct attacks on dissidents worldwide and recruiting U.S. citizens to carry out killings for the Kremlin.
The five alleged organizers – Yuri Khrameev, Kirill Khrameev, Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, Yaidel Delgado Suarez and Angel Eduardo Castro – remain at large. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment until credible evidence is presented.
