MIAMI — The Russian man with a trimmed beard and a printed T-shirt appeared on a March YouTube live stream from a Florida political group, less than three weeks after his country invaded Ukraine, and falsely claimed that what had happened was not an invasion.
“I would like to address the free people of the world to tell you that Western propaganda is lying when they say that Russia invaded Ukraine,” he said through an interpreter.
His name was Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov and he described himself as a “human rights activist”.
But federal authorities say he was working for the Russian government, orchestrating a years-long influence campaign to use American political groups to spread Russian propaganda and interfere in American elections. On Friday, the Justice Department revealed that it had charged Mr. Ionov of conspiring to have American citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government.
Mr Ionov, 32, who lives in Moscow and is not in custody, is accused of recruiting, providing financial support and directing three political groups in Florida, Georgia and California from December 2014 to March to publish Russian propaganda. On Friday, the Department of Finance imposed sanctions on him.
David Walker, the top agent in the FBI’s Tampa field office, called the allegations “some of the most egregious and egregious violations we’ve seen by the Russian government to destabilize and undermine trust in democracy North American”.
In 2017 and 2019, Mr. Ionov supported the campaigns of two candidates for local office in St. Petersburg, Florida, where one of the American political groups was based, according to a 24-page indictment. He wrote to a Russian official in 2019 that he had been “consulting every week” about one of the campaigns, according to the indictment.
“Our election campaign is somewhat unique,” a Russian intelligence official wrote to Mr. Ionov, adding: “Are we the first in history?” Later, Mr. Ionov referred to the candidate, who was not named in the indictment, as “the one we monitor.”
In 2016, according to the indictment, Mr. Ionov paid for the St. Petersburg group to go on a four-city protest tour supporting a “Petition on the Crime of Genocide Against Africans in the United States,” which the group had previously submitted to the United Nations to its management.
“The goal is to increase complaints,” Peter Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence officer, said of the type of behavior Mr. Ionov is accused of. “They just want to fund opposing forces. It’s a means of encouraging social division at low cost. The goal is to create conflict and division.”
The Russian government has a long history of trying to sow division in the US, particularly during the 2016 presidential campaign. Strzok said the Russians have been known to plant stories with fringe groups in an effort to introduce disinformation into the media ecosystem.
Federal investigators described Mr. Ionov as the founder and president of the Russian Anti-Globalization Movement and said it was funded by the Russian government. They said he was working with at least three Russian officials and in conjunction with the FSB, a Russian intelligence agency.
The indictment issued Friday did not name the American political groups, their leaders or the St. Petersburg candidates, who were identified only as unindicted co-conspirator 3 and unindicted co-conspirator 4. And Mr. Ionov is the only person who has been charged in the case.
Updated
July 30, 2022, 5:09 am ET
But leaders of the St Petersburg-based Uhuru Movement, which is part of the African People’s Socialist Party, said their office and the president’s home had been raided by federal agents on Friday morning as part of the investigation.
“They handcuffed me and my wife,” the president, Omali Yeshitela, said on Facebook Live from outside the group’s new headquarters in St. Louis. He said he did not take money from the Russian government, but that he would not be morally opposed to accepting funds from the Russians or “anyone else who wants to support the struggles of blacks.”
The indictment said that Mr. Ionov paid for the founder and chairman of the St. Petersburg group, identified as unindicted Co-conspirator 1, to travel to Moscow in 2015. When he returned, the indictment said, the chairman said in emails with others . leaders of the group that Mr. Ionov wanted the group to be “an instrument” of the Russian government, which did not “bother us.”
“Yes, I have been to Russia,” Mr Yeshitela said in his Facebook Live appearance on Friday, without saying when he went or who paid for his trip. He added that he has also been to other countries, such as South Africa and Nicaragua.
In St. Petersburg, Uhuru Movement’s Akilé Anai told a news conference that federal authorities had seized his car and other personal property.
He called the investigation an attack on the Uhuru movement, which has long been present in St. Petersburg but has had little success in local politics.
“We can have relations with whoever we want,” he said, adding that the Uhuru Movement has not hidden Russia’s support for the war in Ukraine. “We are supporting Russia.”
Ms. Anai ran for City Council in 2017 and 2019 as Eritha “Akilé” Cainion. He received about 18 percent of the vote in the 2019 runoff election.
Mr. Ionov is also accused of running an unidentified political group in Sacramento that pushed for California to secede from the United States. The indictment said he helped fund a 2018 protest at the state Capitol and encouraged the group’s leader to try to break into the governor’s office.
And Mr. Ionov is accused of running an unidentified political group in Atlanta, paying for its members to travel to San Francisco this year to protest at the headquarters of a social media company that was restricting pro-Russian posts about the invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Ionov even provided designs for protest signs, according to the indictment.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the indictment said Mr. Ionov told his Russian intelligence aides that he had asked the St. Petersburg group to support Russia in the “information war unleashed” by the West.
Adam Goldman contributed to the report.