Kasparov Reportedly Warned He Was a Target of Russian-Linked Plot

Garry Kasparov was told by U.S. authorities this summer that he was the target of a plot to kill him, and was placed under special protection, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The paper, Spain’s second-largest, cited a source close to the former world champion. That source said: “US authorities confirmed to him this summer that he is a target.”

Two things should be kept apart. The El Mundo account is a single-sourced newspaper report, and U.S. prosecutors have not publicly named Kasparov as a target in the case that surrounds it. What is on the public record is a Justice Department announcement, not a confirmation about him.

What prosecutors have said

On September 15, the Justice Department revealed that five people had been charged over alleged plots to surveil and kill Russian dissidents and to carry out attacks in Europe. The indictment refers to a dissident in the United States as “Victim-1.” El Mundo identifies that person as Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker.

According to prosecutors, someone recruited by the network photographed and filmed locations associated with Victim-1. Two of the defendants then offered that person $40,000 to carry out the killing. The recruit refused and was asked whether someone else could do it.

All five defendants remain at large, and the charges have yet to be proven in court.

The wider network

El Mundo reports that a network linked to Russian intelligence had been planning attacks on Kasparov and other exiled opponents of Vladimir Putin. It says two targets were to be killed in the United States, while another potential victim was targeted in Vilnius, Lithuania. The plans against Ponomarev were reportedly further advanced than those involving Kasparov.

A long-running target

Nothing in this report arrives out of a vacuum. Kasparov, 63, was world champion from 1985 to 2000 and retired from competitive chess in 2005. He has since become one of Putin’s most prominent critics. In 2012 he was arrested outside a Moscow court, where he was reportedly subject to police brutality, and he left Russia in 2013.

Moscow has treated him as an enemy of the state in escalating steps. Russia designated him a “foreign agent” in 2022, added him to its list of “terrorists and extremists” in 2024, and ordered his arrest in absentia later that year. The state-controlled news agency Tass reported in May that he had been placed on an international wanted list the previous December.

Set against that record, a physical threat is a further escalation of the same campaign rather than a break from it. The legal designations are bureaucratic pressure. An alleged murder-for-hire offer, as described in the indictment for Victim-1, is a different order of seriousness.

Chess connection

Kasparov remains tied to the game through the Saint Louis Chess Club, where he recently played a Chess960 match against GM Veselin Topalov and lost 16-8. For the chess world, the story is a reminder that one of its most recognizable figures lives with a security profile few other players share.

The five defendants are still at large, and no court has tested any of the allegations. Any further confirmation about Kasparov would most likely have to come from U.S. prosecutors or from Kasparov himself.