Ties To Russia's FSB Defended By St. Pete Uhuru Leader

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Speaking in front of the St. Petersburg police headquarters, a leader with the local Uhuru Movement slammed the FBI investigation into the organization’s relationship with Russian Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov. He is accused of working for the Russian Federal Security Service to spread disinformation in the U.S. using social media and meddling in local elections.

Authorities say Ionov worked with three U.S. political organizations in a “malign influence campaign,” according to an indictment unsealed Friday morning in Tampa, a Department of Justice news release said. (Read the full indictment below.)

The indictment doesn't explicitly name the Uhurus, instead referring to "U.S. Political Group 1" in Florida. Ionov also allegedly worked with two other political groups, one in Atlanta and the other in Sacramento, the indictment said.

St. Petersburg police told several media outlets, including the Tampa Bay Times, that one of the three organizations accused of working with the Russian national was the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg. Public information officers with police and the FBI wouldn’t confirm the involvement of the Uhurus in this investigation to St. Pete Patch.

While a joint news conference organized by police, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office was underway inside police headquarters Friday, Eritha Akilé Cainion, representing the Uhuru Movement, spoke to media from the front steps of the department about the accusations against the group and the ongoing investigation into Ionov. She also defended the movement’s relationship with Ionov and Russia.

Cainion, who previously ran for St. Petersburg City Council, said she serves as the director of agitation and propaganda for the African People’s Socialist Party. The worldwide Uhuru Movement falls under the leadership of the party, "uniting African people as one people for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development," according to the party’s website.

In a video provided by Fox 13 Tampa Bay, Cainion said her car and other “personal property” were seized during an FBI raid at her home Friday around 6 a.m. (Watch the video of Cainion’s news conference below.)

“(Authorities) lured me out of the house under false pretenses,” she said. “They told me my car got broken into. It didn’t; they were doing the breaking in.”

She said the Uhuru House at 1245 18th Ave. S. was also raided. Cainion claimed no search warrant was issued at the time of the raid and that officers “broke down the doors.”

During law enforcement’s news conference, police Chief Anthony Holloway said three search warrants were issued in St. Petersburg Friday morning, though he didn’t say which locations were targeted.

Cainon called the charges against Ionov and the investigation into his relationship with the Uhurus “a propaganda campaign against Russia” by the U.S. government and an attack on her group.

“They are attempting to attack this organization. They are attempting to isolate the Black power movement,” she said. “We can have relationships with whoever want to, whoever we see fit to make this revolution possible. We will have a relationship with them. We unite with any force that is willing to unite in our anti-colonial struggle. We will not refuse to engage with others around the world who want to see this (colonial) system go. We will not refuse that.”

Speaking for the African People’s Socialist Party, which has operated for more than 50 years, Cainion said, “We are in support of Russia,” including the country’s current invasion of Ukraine.

She called it a “defensive war” that has less to do about Ukraine as an entity and more about “world colonial powers,” including the United States, “who have an interest in colonial (powers) dominating African people right here in this country and around the world and extracting resources from the majority of peoples on the planet.”

Ionov, who lives in Moscow, is also accused of interfering with St. Petersburg local elections in 2017 and 2019. During their news conference Friday, authorities said he donated money to two candidates and participated in fundraising events for them.

In 2019, before the primary election, he wrote to a Russian official that he had been “consulting every week on the campaign,” according to the DOJ.

When one candidate advanced to the general election, an FSB officer wrote to Ionov, telling him that “our election campaign is kind of unique,” and asked, “are we the first in history?” Ionov later sent the FSB officer additional details about the election, referring to a candidate “whom we supervise,” the DOJ said.

When asked at Friday’s news conference whether she accepted money from Ionov, Cainion, who ran for local office in both 2017 and 2019, refused to answer without her lawyer present.

In March, Cainion hosted an online forum about the Ukraine war that included Ionov, who she introduced as the president of the anti-globalization movement of Russia. That video can be found on The Burning Spear TV YouTube page here.

Patch has reached out to the African People’s Socialist Party and Cainion for additional comments about the investigation into Ionov being linked to the Uhuru Movement.

The Uhuru Movement supported Cainion’s runs for city council, as well as the campaign of Jesse Nevel, the white national chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, who ran for St. Petersburg mayor in 2019.

According to its website, the mission of this solidarity movement “is to organize in the white community to build a mass movement for white reparations to African people in the form of political and material solidarity with the African community-led struggle for African liberation, self-determination and national liberation.”

Patch has reached out to Nevel for comment about the investigation into Ionov.

In 2017, when Cainion ran for the District 6 council seat in St. Petersburg, she earned about 7.32 percent of the vote in the primary election and failed to move on to the general election, according to data from the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections.

In 2019, she ran for the District 7 seat, earning 23.92 percent of the vote in the primary election. She was one of two candidates to move forward to the general election that year, taking home 18.14 percent of all votes in her district and ultimately losing to Lisa Wheeler-Bowman.

Nevel didn’t move past the primary election in 2019, earning just 1.67 percent of the vote in the mayoral competition. Incumbent Mayor Rick Kriseman won re-election that year.

“With the recent news that there is an ongoing investigation occurring related to Russian/Uhuru interference in our St. Petersburg elections including my re-election, disruption of our city business, and distribution of propaganda during my entire time as mayor, I want to commend federal and local law enforcement for their important work,” Kriseman posted on Facebook Monday morning. “There's no place in the Sunshine City — or in America — for these alleged acts. It is vital that we have confidence in the democratic process, that there is no foreign influence, and that suspicious candidacies and nonsensical acts affiliated with fringe groups are viewed as just that and not reported with any seriousness.”

Patch has requested campaign finance information for both Cainion and Nevel from the city of St. Petersburg.

Watch Cainion's Friday news conference:

Read the full indictment accusing Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian national, of working with a St. Petersburg political group to interfere with local elections, spread pro-Russia propaganda and disseminate misinformation about Western political views: