Article · Geopolitics · Lithuania
US charges against a Russian network name Lithuania. What is new, and what was already known?
New is a 2025 plan to kill a person living in Lithuania for 25,000 dollars, which US prosecutors attribute to a former Russian intelligence colonel and his son, an FSB officer. Known is the September 2024 attack in Lithuania: the Cuban national the US now charges with coordinating it was named as wanted by Lithuanian prosecutors in January 2026, and they link that attempt to the GRU. All five US defendants are at large, and an indictment is not proof.
In our 15 September piece on the downed drone, we listed the Šiauliai arson attempt among actions attributed to Russia. Since then, this has changed. On 15 September 2026 the US Department of Justice announced charges against five people. They include an episode that had not been public before, a plan to kill a person in Lithuania. And the same Cuban national whom Lithuanian prosecutors named as wanted in the Šiauliai case in January 2026 is now charged in a US court as well.
This piece separates what the US indictment says, what Lithuanian prosecutors said earlier, and what neither of them says.