Garry Kasparov came to The Free Press office earlier this week with a new member of his team: his security guard. In mid-September, the U.S. government had charged five alleged Russian agents of plotting to assassinate a “prominent Russian dissident” living in the U.S. Although the dissident was identified only as “Victim-1,” there was very little doubt it was Kasparov, who is a wanted man in his home country, from which he fled in 2013, and whose anti-Putin group, Free Russia Forum, was listed as a “terrorist organization” in 2025 by Vladimir Putin’s government.
“I mean, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make this deduction,” he told me during the course of our lengthy interview. Russia has killed others who have crossed Putin over the years, after all. What’s more, the FBI recently told Kasparov that he needed to be “cautious and look out for your security.” As well he should: All five defendants remain at large, including the alleged hitmen in the U.S. who had been hired to target Kasparov. Kasparov’s Free Russia Forum co-founder, Ivan Tyutrin, lives in Lithuania and is seemingly included in the indictment as “Victim-2.” Lithuanian officials have told Tyutrin that his life was in grave danger.
“I’m not privy to Putin’s conversations, of course,” Kasparov said. “But I would be surprised if [the assassination plot] could have moved that far along without a direct order from Putin.”
Watch my conversation with Garry Kasparov here:
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