Russian opposition figure and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said Wednesday that security services in the United States and Lithuania had warned him that his life was in danger, following a suspected Russian plot against Kremlin opponents living abroad. Kasparov, 63, has lived in New York since 2013. In a Substack post, he wrote that he and Ivan Tyutrin, his co-founder of the Free Russia Forum, were not told they were explicit targets: "We were, however, warned by security services in Lithuania and the US that our lives were in danger and that we should take precautions." His defiance was blunt: "But I will not stop and I will not hide... I will continue to do everything I can to rally the free world against Putin's murderous dictatorship."
Kasparov's statement followed an investigation by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which reported that Russian authorities had spent months preparing to assassinate several opposition figures abroad. This summer, American authorities warned Kasparov he could become a target — after which the former world champion was placed under protection for the first time since moving to New York 13 years ago.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department charged five people over alleged plots involving Russian intelligence to assassinate two opposition figures — one in the United States, one in Lithuania — after paying recruits to carry out surveillance on them. Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg said the network had operated since at least 2024, describing it as a global assassination network that recruited both American citizens and foreigners inside the United States to carry out killings on behalf of the Kremlin.
El Mundo's reporting laid out the price list: a recruited operative was promised $1,000 to $1,500 for photographs of locations associated with Ponomarev, and $40,000 for his assassination. A Venezuelan citizen recruited in the United States allegedly monitored several targets associated with Ponomarev in Washington, taking photos and videos — but refused to commit the murder, and was told to find another perpetrator. A separate plot in Vilnius was grimmer still: the third intended victim was to be stabbed, or doused with gasoline and set on fire.
Unconfirmed media reports named the possible targets as Kasparov, who lives in New York; Ilya Ponomarev, the former State Duma deputy who is based in Ukraine but travels regularly to the U.S. and is identified in prosecutors' documents as "Victim No. 1"; and Ivan Tyutrin, an opposition activist based in Lithuania. Kasparov has been placed by Russia on its lists of "foreign agents" and "terrorists and extremists."
The Kremlin said last month it saw no reason to comment on the U.S. allegations in the absence of what it called credible evidence and facts. Russia has previously denied conducting such plots on foreign soil, including in the United States. But the precedents — from Skripal to Navalny — mean nobody is treating this warning as background noise.