An exiled Russian absorption fig surviving successful the US says helium was warned by American and Lithuanian information services that his beingness was successful danger.
Former chess satellite champion Garry Kasparov said helium was 1 of 2 dissidents told to instrumentality precautions, which helium had done.
His comments travel aft the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment earlier this period charging 5 radical who allegedly enactment for a web linked to the Kremlin with plotting attacks and murders successful countries including the US, focusing connected Russian dissidents and defectors.
Kasparov wrote successful his work The Next Move that helium had not been told explicitly that helium and chap Free Russia Forum co-founder Ivan Tyutrin were considered targets, but said some had been warned astir their safety.
Spanish paper El Mundo reported that it had obtained accusation that Kasparov, on with different Russian absorption figure, Ilya Ponomarev, had been warned astir the crippled implicit the summertime by US authorities.
Citing sources adjacent to Kasparov, the insubstantial said helium had been placed nether enhanced extortion implicit the summertime for the archetypal clip since helium moved to the US.
Kasparov wrote separately: "I volition not halt and I volition not hide, adjacent if I thought it was imaginable to bash so.
"My household and I volition not genuinely beryllium harmless arsenic agelong arsenic [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is successful powerfulness successful Russia - a condition shared by millions."
Kasparov retired from competitory chess successful 2005 to prosecute a vocation successful politics, founding movements that openly opposed Putin earlier fleeing Russia successful 2013.
He has not returned since. Russia has classed him arsenic a overseas cause pursuing the full-scale penetration of Ukraine successful 2022, and subsequently added him to a database of terrorists and extremists successful 2024 - some categorisations helium rejects.
The different reported target, Ponomarev, was the lone Russian MP who voted against the amerciable annexation of Crimea successful 2014 and went into exile successful Ukraine.
He declined to corroborate oregon contradict to the Moscow Times whether helium had been tipped disconnected astir the alleged crippled but said the allegations marked "a caller level of escalation" by Russia.
English (US)·