FBI exposes Kremlin hit squad targeting Putin's opponents, investigation shows
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The Kremlin has created a death squad to kidnap and kill opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, the Insider, an independent Russian media outlet, reported on March 13.
However, the hit squad was exposed when one of its employees was arrested in Colombia in February, according to the Insider.
The report follows the murders and mysterious deaths of more than 20 Putin critics since he came to power in 1999. On Feb. 14, five European governments said that Russia had likely killed opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a dart frog toxin called epibatidine in 2024.
The death squad, called Center 795, was created in December 2022, the Insider reported.
The unit is headed by Denis Fisenko, a colonel of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), and includes officers of the FSB and Russia's military intelligence (GUR), according to the media outlet. The hit squad allegedly reports to the General Staff and the Defense Ministry.
The Insider also published a list of the squad's employees and explained its structure.
The media outlet reported that Center 795 is based at the Patriot Park in the town of Kubinka, Moscow Oblast. The center is using a training ground belonging to arms producer Kalashnikov, which is owned by military conglomerate Rostekhnologii, according to the publication.
The squad is reportedly financed by Andrei Bokaryov, a co-owner of Kalashnikov.
One of the unit's employees, Denis Alimov, was arrested at Colombia's El Dorado International Airport on Feb. 24. He was traveling as a tourist from Istanbul and booked a hotel in Cartagena, Colombia.
Alimov was charged by the U.S. with planning to kidnap and murder opponents of Putin and terrorism financing. He is in custody in Colombia and may be extradited to the U.S.
The Insider reported, citing its sources, that Alimov was planning to kill family members of Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen insurgent leader and prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's government-in-exile.
One of Alimov's agents was Darko Durovic, a U.S. resident of Serbian descent, the Insider reported.
In 2024, Alimov gave Durovic a $60,000 advance payment and offered $1.5 million for each kidnapped person, according to the Insider. He also allegedly offered to pay more than $10 million to capture another person “dead or alive.”
To communicate, Alimov and Durovic used Google Translate to translate between Russian and Serbo-Croatian. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtained access to their correspondence from Google and was able to monitor it in real time, the Insider reported.
Alimov has also contacted Dejan Beric, who has fought in the Donbas against Ukraine and recruited Serbs and Bosnians for the Russian army, according to the Insider.
The report follows the death of Putin's main political opponent Alexei Navalny in an Artic prison colony in 2024. Laboratories in the U.K., Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands received Navalny's biological samples after his death and unanimously concluded that he had been poisoned with epibatidine.
This was not the first poisoning of Navalny. In 2020, he was poisoned in Russia and flown for treatment to Germany while in a coma.
German doctors, as well as several independent labs in Europe, said in 2020 that he had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent – a chemical weapon produced by the Russian government.
A joint investigation by The Insider, Bellingcat, CNN, and Der Spiegel revealed that Navalny had been poisoned by agents of Russia’s FSB in 2020. The media outlets also identified the agents' names.
The same FSB squad that allegedly tried to kill Navalny had also trailed three other people before they were found dead with signs of poisoning from 2014 to 2019, according to an investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, CNN, and Der Spiegel.
