Activists Charged With Pushing Russian Propaganda Go on Trial in Florida

An unusual trial scheduled to begin on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., involves obscure candidates for local office, activist groups far outside the political mainstream and relatively little money changing hands.

But experts say it offers a rare glimpse into how Russia has tried for decades to secretly influence American politics.

Prosecutors say that Russia, in relatively low-tech fashion, sought out a sympathetic group in the United States, invited its leader to visit Moscow and established a long-term relationship through calls, email and electronic messages. The group, which has long had a presence in St. Petersburg, Fla., then promoted Russian views on its website, social media accounts and radio station. One post argued that Russian athletes should be allowed to participate in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Four Americans face charges that they conspired to have other U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government, or that they acted as unregistered Russian agents themselves. The prosecutors say that Russians directed them — and in some cases, paid them — to push Russian propaganda, including after their country invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, say that the U.S. government is criminalizing dissent protected under the First Amendment. All four of them are current or former members of the African People’s Socialist Party, an organization promoting Black power; three are also members of the Uhuru Movement, the party’s activist arm, which is based in St. Petersburg and St. Louis.

One of the defendants also founded a different group, Black Hammer, a radical Black separatist organization in Atlanta. The Uhuru Movement supports self-determination for Black people and has protested issues from racism and colonialism to local police conduct for decades.

“We are innocent of what they claim we’ve done,” Omali Yeshitela, the chairman of the Uhuru Movement and one of the defendants, said in an interview. “We’re just a vehicle that’s being used to assault free speech.”

Regardless of the outcome of the trial, which is expected to last about four weeks, experts say it offers a window into how the Russian government has long tried to influence U.S. elections and promote Russia’s geopolitical agenda.

“Infiltrating social movements has been core to Russian espionage since the 1950s,” said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington-based research group that promotes democracy. Some of the infiltration attempts involve unwitting Americans, he added.

In the Florida case, which did not result in any pro-Russia candidate elected to public office, the payoff for Russia may seem exceedingly small. But on a broader level, Mr. Schafer said, Russia wants more “authentic” American groups to adopt Russia’s perspective.

“Even if they are not in a real position of power,” he said, “if you can infiltrate and influence enough of these groups and have them at some level adopting positions that are beneficial to you — and that doesn’t necessarily mean pro-Russian positions, but just to further radicalize them and create further divisions — we know that’s obviously a win for Russia.”

In the 2023 indictment of Mr. Yeshitela and his co-defendants, prosecutors said that a Russian man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, engaged with the four and with unnamed co-conspirators for years, urging them to make pro-Russian statements while he backed their unsuccessful campaigns for the St. Petersburg City Council in 2017 and 2019.

According to prosecutors, the events took place between 2014 and 2022, and Mr. Ionov worked with the F.S.B., a Russian intelligence agency. Mr. Ionov was indicted in the case in 2022; two other Russians, Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov and Yegor Sergeyevich Popov, both apparent F.S.B. officials, were indicted in 2023. None of the three are in the United States at this point and therefore will likely never face trial.

Mr. Yeshitela’s co-defendants are Penny Joanne Hess, an Uhuru Movement leader; Jesse Nevel, an Uhuru Movement member; and Augustus C. Romain Jr., a former African People’s Socialist Party member and founder of Black Hammer.

The relationship between Russia and the Uhuru Movement began after Mr. Ionov paid for Mr. Yeshitela to travel to Moscow twice in 2015, the indictment says. Mr. Ionov acted through his organization, the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which prosecutors say was funded by the Russian government.

They say that Mr. Ionov paid the Uhuru Movement nearly $7,000 to conduct a four-city protest tour in 2016 drawing attention to a “Petition on Crime of Genocide Against African People in the United States,” which it had previously submitted to the United Nations.

In 2019, the indictment says, Mr. Ionov referred in communications with his F.S.B. handlers to a St. Petersburg City Council candidate “whom we supervise,” adding that he consulted on the campaign “every week.”

The only Uhuru Movement member to run for the City Council that year was Akilé Anai, whose name appeared on the ballot as Eritha “Akilé” Cainion. She received about 18 percent of the vote in the runoff election and lost. She has not been charged in the case and is unnamed in the indictment.

In 2022, the indictment says, Mr. Ionov provided designs for protest signs and paid nearly $3,000 for Mr. Romain and three other Black Hammer members to travel to San Francisco to protest at the headquarters of an unnamed social media company that restricted pro-Russian posts about the invasion of Ukraine. News articles at the time reported on a protest outside Meta, the company that owns Facebook.

Mr. Romain later protested United States policy on Russia in Atlanta in 2022, also at the direction of Mr. Ionov, the indictment says.

Mark O’Brien, a lawyer assisting Mr. Romain, said in written responses to questions that Mr. Romain “never knew he was dealing with the Russian government,” has no relationship with the other defendants and plans to testify at trial.

Mr. Yeshitela, who is 82, acknowledged traveling to Russia and other countries for conferences. But he and his lawyers denied that the defendants acted at the direction and control of Russia, saying their actions were protected speech consistent with their political views. Those views simply did not align with U.S. policy, the lawyers said.

And the group considered the payments sent by Mr. Ionov to be donations backing the Uhuru Movement’s actions, not payment for actions on behalf of Russia.

“We’ve been doing this work now for more than 50 years,” Mr. Yeshitela said.

The maximum penalty that Mr. Yeshitela, Ms. Hess and Mr. Nevel could face is 10 years in prison for failing to register as a foreign agent and five years for the charge of conspiring to have others act as Russian agents.

Mr. Romain, who was not charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, could face a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He is defending himself in court.