Washington, D.C. – The United States has charged four US citizens and three Russian citizens with conducting a “malicious influence campaign”, a move the Justice Department described as “essential” to protect the country from foreign interference.
On Tuesday, the Moscow branch accused it of recruiting and funding US political groups to act as “unregistered illegal agents of the Russian government”.
The organizations the US government claims to have ties to Russia include the African People’s Socialist Party and its Uhuru Movement (APSP), a self-declared anti-colonialist organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida, as well as Black Hammer, a fringe black separatist. group.
Three APSP officials were charged Tuesday, including Omali Yeshitela, the president of the group whose home was raided by the FBI last year. Black Hammer leader Augustus Romain Jr, known as Gazi Kodzo, was also charged.
Yeshitela has previously denied being a Russian agent and said the US government targeted him for his activism.
“This case is not about whether I went to Russia or not, whether or not I have a position on the war in Ukraine that was the same as what the Russians had,” Yeshitela wrote in an article in late 2022. “This attack was committed against us because we have always fought for the liberation of Africa and African people everywhere.”
Among the Russian citizens charged on Tuesday was Aleksandr Ionov. The Justice Department accused him of using a government-funded organization called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) to carry out an influence campaign in coordination with Russian security forces.
Two Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers were also charged with allegedly being part of that attack.
The Justice Department had already indicted Ionov last July for allegedly interfering in US politics. He dismissed the allegations as baseless at the time.
The Russian embassy in Washington DC did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Earlier this year, the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program offered up to $10 million for information on Ionov and others it has accused of election interference.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department said Ionov and FSB officers “conspired to directly and substantially influence democratic elections in the United States by clandestinely interfering with the political campaign of a particular candidate for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2019 finance and manage”. .
The statement did not specify the election race or candidate in question. Municipal elections were held in Saint Petersburg in 2019, with the APSP fielding a candidate who lost more than 60 percent of the vote in the general election.
“Today’s announcement paints a glaring picture of the actions of the Russian government and the efforts the FSB will go to to disrupt our elections, sow discord in our country and ultimately enlist American citizens in their efforts,” said Kurt Ronnow. , a senior FBI official. in a statement.
“All Americans should be deeply concerned about the tactics of the FSB and remain vigilant for any attempt to undermine our democracy.”
It is not clear how Russia sought to exert influence by forging links with small US groups or by attempting to influence local elections in St Petersburg, a city of 260,000.
The indictment said that in 2020 Ionov prepared a report to one of the FSB officers in which he said the local campaigns he supported in Florida allow “more effective campaigning during municipal elections” and “lay the groundwork for a new electoral base”.
Washington has long accused Moscow of trying to interfere in the US election and sow divisions in the country – accusations that Russia has rejected. The US has pledged to crack down on what it calls Russian disinformation, including war propaganda in Ukraine.
Tuesday’s allegations also coincided with a Russian court upholding the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow on espionage charges that the White House has dismissed as “ridiculous.”
In a separate criminal indictment on Tuesday, the Justice Department charged Russian national Natalia Burlinova with illegally acting as a foreign agent in the US.
Burlinova, a Moscow resident, “conspired with an FSB officer to recruit U.S. citizens from academic and research institutions to travel to Russia to participate in a public diplomacy program called Meeting Russia,” the Justice Department said.