Garry Kasparov said security services in the U.S. warned him and Ivan Tyutrin that their lives were in danger after a report on an alleged Russian assassination plot. Kasparov said he had taken precautions and would continue to do so.
He wrote, “But I will not stop and I will not hide.” He also said, “For 20 years of fighting Putin's bloody dictatorship I've been asked if I was worried about my safety. I used to joke, "Would that help?" Now there are indictments over a Russian assassination plot on US soil. My Next Move on the shocking news:
Sept. 15 indictments
The U.S. Justice Department revealed on September 15 that five people had been charged over alleged plots to surveil and kill Russian dissidents and carry out attacks in Europe. According to prosecutors, a person recruited by the network photographed and filmed locations associated with Victim-1, whom El Mundo identifies as Ilya Ponomarev in the United States.
Two of the defendants offered that person $40,000 to carry out the killing, and the person refused. Prosecutors said the person was then asked whether someone else could do it. The five defendants remain at large.
El Mundo and U.S. prosecutors
El Mundo reported on Wednesday that a network linked to Russian intelligence had been planning attacks on Kasparov and other exiled opponents of Vladimir Putin. El Mundo also reported that plans to kill Ilya Ponomarev in the United States were further advanced, and that another potential victim was targeted in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Kasparov said he had not been told explicitly that he or Tyutrin were among the people whose names are withheld in the U.S. indictment. U.S. prosecutors have not publicly named either man as targets in that case, which leaves the warning in a narrow space between the public indictment and the private security alert.
Kasparov and Vladimir Putin
The warning lands on a long arc for Kasparov, who was the world chess champion from 1985 to 2000, retired from chess in 2005, and left Russia in 2013 after being arrested outside a Moscow court in 2012. Russia designated him a foreign agent in 2022, added him to its list of terrorists and extremists in 2024, and later ordered his arrest in absentia.
Kasparov co-founded the Free Russia Forum in Lithuania and has remained a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin. For readers tracking the case, the immediate practical point is simple: the public indictment still does not name Kasparov or Tyutrin, the five defendants are still missing, and the warning he described points to a threat that has moved from allegation into personal security precautions.
