FBI alleges black identity extremist groups were acting as ‘instruments of the Russian government’

A suspected Russian agent was engaged with two black identity extremist groups operating in Saint Petersburg, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia, according to a federal indictment.

The indictment of Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, the head of Russia’s Anti-Globalization Movement, alleges that the Moscow-based operative had coordinated with three U.S.-based organizations, identified only as “political group 1” based in St. Petersburg, Florida, “political group 2” based in Atlanta, Georgia, and “political group 3” based in California over a period of several years.

Group 1 has been identified as the Uhuru Movement, also known as the African People’s Socialist Party.

Group 2 has been identified as the Atlanta-based “Black Hammers.”

Group 3 has been identified as the group Yes, California, which advocated for California’s secession from the union.

The FBI calls the groups “instruments of the Russian government.”

Uhuru Movement: Based on 1960s radicalism

According to the indictment, Ionov – whom the FBI calls an agent under the control of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB – sought to support the Uhuru Movement’s campaign efforts in two local elections in 2017 and one in 2019, urged the group to promote calls for “reparations,” and called for the group to issue a petition accusing the United States of conducting genocide against African Americans.

Ionov transferred money to members of the group, according to the indictment, totaling less than $20,000 total over the course of several years.

In the 2017 election, the Uhuru Movement backed two of its members as candidates, Eritha ‘Akile’ Cainion for District 6 city council member, and Jesse Nevel for St. Petersburg mayor. Neither had much impact, receiving 7% and less than 2% in their respective primaries, which already had with multiple candidates running. In 2019, Cainion finished second in the primary but received only 18% in the general election. According to the indictment, Ionov referred to Cainion in 2019 as the candidate “whom we supervise” in a message to a Russian intelligence officer. Interestingly the indictment records an FSB officer #1 telling Ionov that the election scheme was “kind of unique” and asking whether it was “the first in history.”

In a press conference following the release of the indictment, Cainion continued to defend Russia saying the Uhuru Movement would unite with “any forces” opposing what she called “colonial powers.”

The Uhuru Movement was founded in 1972 by its Chairman Omali Yeshitela AKA Joseph Waller, identified as Unindicted co-conspirator #1. Yeshitela is a former U.S. Army veteran, apparently recruited to Marxist ideologies and opposition to what he describes as Western colonialism in Africa while stationed in Germany.

Yeshitela eventually left the U.S. military and drifted among a variety of black liberation and civil rights groups, ranging from the NAACP to the Nation of Islam, and describes himself as a fan of Malcom X. Eventually Yeshitela joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966, as that organization was taken over by Stokely Carmichael, and began to make a transition from the language of civil rights to that of black power. Yeshitela would serve 5 years in prison for his part in a SNCC action which destroyed a St. Petersburg city mural.

While in prison Yeshitela would form the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), which would eventually merge with other Florida-based black power organizations to form the African People’s Socialist Party (APSA), which can best be described as Pan-African. The group rejects the term, preferring the phrase African Internationalist. APSA is a Marxist group that seeks police and prison abolition, the payment of reparations not just to the descendants of American black slaves but to all Africans, and quotes Kwame Nkrumah in describing their goal as “the total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African socialist government.”

The Uhuru Movement follows a Black Panther-style social program that emphasizes the creation of Uhuru-owned businesses and social programs within a given community in which they operate, including a bakery, furniture store, radio station, farmer’s market and community centers in St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Oakland.

The Black Hammers

According to the indictment, “political group 2,” The Black Hammers or Black Hammer Party, is an Atlanta-based Black Separatist group led by Gazie Kodzo AKA Augustus Romain, whom the indictment identifies as unindicted co-conspirator #5.

Kodzo was formerly Secretary General of the Uhuru movement but split off to found the Black Hammer party in 2018.  Kodzo allegedly participated in a 2022 protest campaign against Facebook at the direction of the alleged Russian agent, after that company banned posts in support of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. The protest had only 4 attendees, all of whom traveled at Ionov’s expense, according to the indictment.

Kodzo is described as an unstable and cult leader-like figure, whose personality has disrupted the Black Hammer party and prevented substantive growth of the group since his defection from the Uhuru movement. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported,

Critics, including a number of defectors, say the Black Hammer Party is a cult and Kodzo’s stunts are an attempt to build social media clout and online donations to support his lifestyle, according to interviews and online statements. ‘It was pretty much whatever Gazi wanted to do,’ said Kodzo’s former chief of staff, a woman who goes by the name Savvy. ‘Whatever popped into Gazi’s head. … He basically took over the organization.’

The group briefly received a nationwide profile in May of 2021 after a flawed attempt to create an autonomous camp in Colorado known as “Hammer City.” The group’s efforts were heavily promoted by Russian-owned media, but Kodzo’s antics and bizarre behavior captured regular media as well.

Kodzo’s apparent emphasis on drawing attention, even negative attention, can best be seen after a standoff with police in a Fayetteville, Georgia home, where one Black Hammer Party member was founded dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“This is just going to build me up at the end of the day, so thank you for that,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported Kodzo as saying in a livestream, “If you think that I’m concerned or anything like that, you’re out of your mind.”

Insights into Russian political operations inside the United States

The indictment provides some interesting insight into Russian operations, both successes and limitations.

If seen solely through the lens of “election meddling” the operation comes off unimpressive. Ionov allegedly spent a relative pittance over a few years on two fringe candidates who played almost zero role in the actual outcome of an election in St. Petersburg, Florida, a location which lacks any greater strategic political significance. Even at the relatively low cost it seems hardly worthwhile.

If, on the other hand, the real purpose of the operation is agitation and demoralization, and the Russian interest is not in these groups achieving “results” but rather increasing the general sense of unease and discomfort the American public has, than it may very well be judged successful.

The seven-year FSB operation appears to be a case study of what counterintelligence analysts believe is a very long-term, widespread, deeply rooted strategic effort to exploit differences in American society. Psychological warfare practitioners call such orchestrated actions “divisive operations.”

As one of the unindicted co-conspirators noted in an email to other members, “more than likely” the Russian government sought to “utilize forces inside the U.S. to sew [sic] divisions.”

According to the indictment, most of the funds presented to the Uhuru Movement were to support a four-city January 2016 tour in support of a petition to the United Nations that the U.S. is engaged in genocide against African Americans, which makes sense if the goal is media coverage which will agitate mainstream Americans, but which has no electoral impact.

While Russia also attempted to use these organizations to directly expound on Russian government foreign policies, notably related to the banning of the Russian Olympic team, and in response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, these efforts come off as incongruent and ineffective, the Black Hammer Party’s four-person protest being a case in point.

Where the Russian influence was supplementing a long-term effort (such as the Uhuru Movement’s demand for reparations) a more significant impact is seen to have been made.

For nearly a century, the Russian intelligence services have sought to exploit grievances among African-Americans, to penetrate and manipulate mainstream civil rights movements, and to provoke extremism within black communities.

As early as the 1920s, the Soviets supported efforts to promote the notion of a black separatist movement in the American South, culminating in the creation of the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and 1980s. Moscow and its surrogates in Cuba and East Germany stoked extremism and division in the mainstream civil rights movement of the 1950s through 1980s. Groups like the Uhuru Movement shows a consistent, arguably controlled, leadership spanning five decades.

The indictment shows that Vladimir Putin has sponsored a resurgence of KGB-style subversion against the African-American community. It is unlikely that Moscow would waste FSB officers’ efforts on a few small and apparently insignificant operations like those described in the indictment, indicating that the FBI has uncovered elements of a far larger and deeper set of strategic offensive operations.