As recently as last year, Russians tied to the meddling in the 2016 election, talked about plans to spark racial unrest and violence in the U.S., NBC News is reporting
The network news attributed the information to documents it reviewed. The documents show communications between associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-link oligarch indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for influence operations against the U.S.
The Prigozhin associates discussed attempting to exploit racial tensions beyond misinformation efforts tied to the last presidential election, according to the documents.
NBC News said it obtained the documents through the Dossier Center, an investigative project funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The network news has not independently verified the documents.
But the documents discussed several proposals aimed at igniting racial discord.
One suggestion included recruiting African-Americans and taking them to camps in Africa “for combat prep and training in sabotage.” They would be returned to the U.S. to foment violence.
They also would work to establish a pan-African state in the U.S, according to the network news.
NBC News noted the plan is light on details and there is no indication it was ever put into motion. But it said the goal was to “destabilize the internal situation in the U.S.”
“Regardless of whether or not these plans are an amateurish thought experiment, the fact that these people are talking about doing this should disturb Americans of all stripes,” Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI told NBC News.
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