(NewsNation) — In a recently unsealed federal indictment, four Americans from St. Petersburg, Florida, were charged with working for the Russian government.
The four Americans were members of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, political groups in the U.S.
The Department of Justice says Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, Jesse Nevel, and Augustus Romain Jr. accepted money from Russian agent Alexander Ionov to influence local elections and spread disinformation on their local radio station — allegations that they have denied.
“I ain’t never worked for Russia, never, never, never,” Yeshitela said.
Federal authorities have not minced words when it comes to these latest arrests, saying it paints a picture of what the Russian government will do to interfere with U.S. elections.
“We certainly are in a new Cold War,” said Jonathan Sanders, a journalism professor at Stony Brook University. “The spying is the very least of it.”
Sanders has covered Moscow extensively for decades.
“They realize that agents of influence can make a difference in American elections,” he said. “So whether they believe in it or not, they are very active in trying to spread open the cracks in American society. So they will be talking about Black Lives Matters or should transgender people be able to participate in sports — anything to force the country to be more divisive.”
These four Americans are just the latest to be charged with spying on behalf of Russia.
In a separate case out of Washington, D.C., Russian national Natalia Burlinova is accused of being an illegal agent of Russia in the U.S.
Other accused Russian spies are not so high-profile, with arrests happening across the country.
In December, an unassuming Ukrainian couple living in New Hampshire were among seven charged with running an international smuggling ring that funneled military technology and weapons to Russia.
In July, another couple who had quietly lived in Hawaii for decades were discovered to be former KGB agents who had assumed the identities of two dead Texas babies. The husband managed to infiltrate the U.S. Coast Guard, where he served for 22 years before retiring. Both were charged with conspiring to commit crimes against the U.S.
“You can see a Russian or Chinese spy almost anywhere in the United States, said Jamil Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University. “They are more active in the big cities, but (they) operate across the entire country.”
It’s only gotten worse, he said.
“Our adversaries can come up against us and exploit our freedom of expression and our freedom of speech to get messages in to Americans and convey messages to them in ways that just couldn’t be done in the past,” Jaffer said.