It appears that some of the major ransomware gangs are operating from Russia and are tolerated by the government, as long as they don't hit domestic targets.
The US cannot really send special forces there without risking a massive escalation.
The US cannot really send special forces there without risking a massive escalation.
Also, the US and allies can enforce Russian AML laws as written on paper. If, say, the UK freezes all of Oleg Deripaska's assets there, Vova will absolutely get the message. We're not going to bring down the Russian government with military force for a million different reasons, but doing it with sanctions and prosecution is a totally different story.
But sending a spy to a software developers house and assassinating them probably isn't going to stop the problem - more people will spring up doing the same.
Russia has always been notoriously hard to spy on.
I would not be surprised if there was only a handful of well placed assets and most of the spying being done electronically.