Good morning! In the past few years, many people from the West—whose minds have been washed by Russian propaganda—have decided to move to Russia in order to escape gender-neutral bathrooms, immigrants, and other supposed horrors of the decadent West. Here are several FAFO stories about the “paradise” that actually awaited them in Putin’s Russia.
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FAFO: Russia as a Haven for Westerners Tired of Liberalism
Yesterday, I came across an excellent Twitter thread showing examples of Westerners who went to Russia believing it to be a promised land, only to end up imprisoned, beaten, robbed, or killed. I’ll share some examples from that thread, along with others I’ve encountered.
Promoting Russia as an alternative to the “decadent and worthless West” is nothing new. Many people with communist ideals who fell for Soviet propaganda ended up in gulags or disappeared during Stalin’s purges.
One of the most insidious campaigns targeted African Americans who, during the Depression era in the U.S., faced severe discrimination. For many who arrived in the Soviet Union with hope, initial enthusiasm quickly turned into disappointment, as formal Soviet declarations of equality often masked deep racial stereotypes.
Russia has changed its target audience, but it still exploits the naïve in the same way for its propaganda, whoever fits the moment. From South African farmers and “traditional families” fleeing “homosexual propaganda,” to social-justice activists like Francine Villa, an African-American woman who left the United States in 2019 to escape racism and police violence, believing she would find safety and fairness in Russia. She became a Russian citizen, had a child, and even appeared in an RT propaganda film praising supposed racial harmony.
However, everything collapsed this summer when her neighbours beat her, hurled racial slurs at her, and blocked her entryway in front of her two-year-old child, while the police—as usual—did nothing.
The story of the Slovak known as “Flipper” is even more striking: in 2023, he decided to leave the “decadent LGBTQ EU” and start a new life in the promised land of Russia. A talented musician and author of pathetic odes to Putin, he set off on foot across half of Europe, ended up at the Estonian border, and tried to swim across the partially frozen Narva River to enter his earthly paradise. Instead of a warm welcome, FSB agents greeted him with a beating, confiscated his phone, accused him of espionage, and placed him in prison, where—according to his diary—he shared an overcrowded cell with a hole in the floor instead of a toilet, along with cockroaches and rats. After two months, Slovakia diplomatically pulled him out of the Russian judicial swamp, and Flipper, now sober-minded, admits that the conditions Ukrainian prisoners likely face are “barbaric,” and that his Russophilia ended in a brutal collision with reality.
The “Donbas Cowboy” is an even crazier story. A Texan who in 2014 launched a crowdfunded “fact-finding mission” to Donbas. From being a teenage socialist sympathizer to attempting to enter Cuba at a time when everyone was fleeing it, from a failed run for the U.S. Senate to a smuggling career that landed him in prison. After that, he joined pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, where he spent ten years fighting “Nazis”—only to be killed by drunk Russian comrades who suspected he was a spy.
In late January 2024, a conservative Canadian couple—angry over alleged “extremes” of liberal Canada, such as gender-neutral bathrooms and the presence of immigrants—sold everything, left the country, and, without knowing Russian, moved to a village in Siberia, convinced they would find a better life. Instead, they quickly discovered that Russians do not speak English and that they harbour the same prejudices toward foreigners who do not know the local language that the couple themselves had toward immigrants in Canada. Their brief media fame turned into a bureaucratic nightmare: Russian banks froze all their accounts. They then filmed a video titled “I Am Very Disappointed in This Country,” which soon mysteriously disappeared and was replaced with an apologetic clip. The couple and their children are now stuck in Russia, where they film propaganda praising Russian shops and tractors.
I’m also reminded of our own domestic promoters of the Russian paradise, such as Dajkovic and Igor Damjanovic, and I can’t help but wonder why they themselves have never actually gone there to live, if everything is so much better, fairer, and more moral than in the decadent West or in the corrupt and treacherous Montenegro they so despise.
I’m even more curious what they encountered during their stays in Russia, facing its bureaucracy, everyday disrespect toward foreigners, and widespread violence that is systematically ignored. Because I have information that things were not always so pleasant for them.
Did they also experience humiliation and mistreatment, as so many others did who fell for the myth of Russia as a promised land? I doubt we’ll ever hear about it publicly, because admitting such experiences would shatter the propaganda image they have maintained for years—and from which they comfortably live in Montenegro and Serbia.
That’s all for today. Have a pleasant rest of your day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial board)