Oct 1 (Reuters) – Russian opposition figure and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said on Wednesday that security services in the US and Lithuania had warned him that his life was in danger following a suspected plot against Kremlin opponents living outside Russia.
US authorities said last month they had charged five people over alleged plots involving Russian intelligence to assassinate two opposition figures, one in the US and the other in Lithuania, after paying recruits to carry out surveillance on both of them.
Unconfirmed media reports have named the possible targets as Kasparov, who lives in New York; Ilya Ponomaryov, a dissident who is based in Ukraine but travels regularly to the US; and Ivan Tyutrin, an opposition activist based in Lithuania.
Kasparov, 63, wrote in a Substack post that he and Tyutrin 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,” he wrote.
“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,” added Kasparov, whom Russia has placed on its lists of “foreign agents” and “terrorists and extremists”.
The Kremlin said last month it saw no reason to comment on the US 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 US.
(Reporting by Suramya Kaushik in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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