There’s a style of MAGA conservative so proper wing, so mind useless, that they undergo the immense problem of transferring themselves and their household to Russia—the place homosexual and transgender folks supposedly don’t exist, and … nicely, that seems to be the majority of the motivation for fleeing. They think about a utopia the place “traditional values” rule and “wokeness” is banished, even when it means embracing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Russia hasn’t simply welcomed these ideological expats, it additionally markets itself as a refuge for them. In 2023, a Russian immigration lawyer publicly pitched a “migrant village” outdoors Moscow, designed to deal with lots of of American and Canadian households who need a lifetime of healthful, state-approved traditionalism. Russian media breathlessly claimed that about 200 households had been keen to enroll.
In actuality? By mid-2025, the grand imaginative and prescient had fizzled into simply two occupied properties—considered one of them belonging to a household you’re about to satisfy—and a PR stunt that performed higher on state TV than on the bottom.
Putin, after all, loves these Individuals for propaganda functions—till the cameras cease rolling. Then he leaves them to fend for themselves in a rustic with a hostile local weather, vital language, cultural, and authorized boundaries, and an economic system greatest described as “Soviet nostalgia with fewer working elevators.” Let’s meet a number of of those true believers.
The Hare household
Leo and Chantelle Hare determined they’d had sufficient of the US after encountering, of their phrases, “too many lesbians” of their kids’s faculty. In Russia, they noticed a land free from LGBTQ+ “indoctrination” and overflowing with healthful, patriarchal advantage.
In order that they bought every little thing, boarded a airplane with their three youngsters, and landed in Russia’s icy embrace, solely to right away run right into a wall of paperwork. No housing. No work. No social security internet. They latched onto a sequence of native pastors and different samaritans for short-term shelter—as a result of socialism is seemingly superb when it’s maintaining them heat and fed. They only name it “hospitality” when it’s for them.
Leo Hare share his viewpoint “on his current situation.”
For months, they ping-ponged from one free lodging to a different, having fun with the type of neighborhood assist they’d denounce as “woke handouts” if it got here within the type of an American meals stamp card. For all their rants about rejecting a “nanny state,” they traded the U.S. security internet they despise for a patchwork of Russian church basements and borrowed couches.
Then, in a show of impeccable monetary judgment, they invested almost all their financial savings in a shady enterprise scheme that’s now collapsing. As an alternative of reducing their losses, they’ve satisfied themselves that divine windfall will intervene. Really, they assume Putin himself will hear of their plight and personally step in to avoid wasting them. As a result of nothing says “effective leader of a nuclear superpower” like micromanaging the dangerous funding selections of a pair from Texas.
They appear to genuinely consider that, between murdering his neighbors and crushing dissent, Putin will carve out time in his schedule to trace down some shady small-town grifter and get the Hares’ a refund. But when Putin can’t do it, they’ve obtained a backup plan: “Jesus is our lawyer.” And he’s most likely the one legal professional in Russia who will work free of charge.
The Huffman household
Texan father of six Derek Huffman was achieved with America’s “woke culture”—the “LGBT indoctrination,” the poisonous dyes in meals, the federal government overreach, and the, uh, discrimination they confronted, in Texas, as a white household.
“As a white household, [we were] being informed we’re racist and never given the identical alternatives due to the color of our pores and skin,” he mentioned.
However that wasn’t the worst of it. The Huffmans’ world was turned the other way up when his daughter discovered about—gasp!—lesbians.
“The final straw was when we found out my daughter Sophia learnt about lesbians from a girl in her class,” Huffman informed Russian state TV. “She didn’t fully understand it, but for us, that was enough to realize something had to change.”
His daughter clearly didn’t care concerning the existence of lesbians, however apparently even Texas was too woke for Huffman. Searching for a purer, safer life, the household relocated to Russia beneath the Kremlin’s “shared values” visa—a three-year residency scheme pitched as a sanctuary for these fleeing “destructive neoliberal ideology.”
“The city was cleaner, safer, and more orderly than we ever imagined,” Huffman gushed to Russian state media after a go to to Moscow. “Most importantly, we found a place that respected our values—where we finally felt at home.” The household was one of many two ending up within the American Village.
However three years was too lengthy to attend for citizenship, so Huffman determined to hurry issues up the Russian means: by becoming a member of the military. He signed up in Could anticipating a civilian publish—welding, perhaps mechanics, or perhaps a struggle correspondent gig—something to assist his household with out truly going through hazard.
As an alternative, this being Putin’s Russia, everybody had snort and handed him a rifle. With zero army expertise and no Russian language abilities, Huffman was rushed by means of fundamental coaching—carried out solely in a language he didn’t perceive—and deployed close to the Ukrainian entrance.
His spouse DeAnna known as it “being thrown to the wolves,” and mentioned he hadn’t been paid, whereas additionally being requested to “donate” 10,000 rubles for provides. And really changing into Russian, DeAnna additionally admitted that she was a former alcoholic and had began consuming once more as a result of stress.
In June, Huffman posted a Father’s Day message—camouflage-clad, eager for residence, promising he’d “do whatever it takes to be safe and to come home to you.” Months later, there’s been no confirmed replace, solely periodic rumors of his loss of life.
At one level, his household briefly launched a Telegram channel with a single publish—his spouse and daughters in tears, pleading, “We are asking the United States government to save this family.” It was shortly deleted, maybe after they realized that President Donald Trump cared precisely as a lot about them as Putin does—which is to say, completely nothing.
The Feenstra household
Arend and Anneesa Feenstra had been Canadian farmers, however of their minds, the homosexual hordes loomed giant, threatening the very existence of their giant household.
“We didn’t feel safe for our children there in the future anymore,” mentioned Arend on Russian state TV. “There’s a lot of left-wing ideology, LGBTQ+, trans, just a lot of things that we don’t agree with that they teach there now, and we wanted to get away from that for our children.”
With eight youngsters, the percentages had been first rate no less than considered one of them may finally veer away from godly heterosexuality, so the Feenstras packed up and headed to Russia. However actuality hit onerous and quick.
Canadian farmer Arend Feenstra and his household fled to Russia to flee the homosexual hordes armed with … no heat garments or command of Russian.
Their first disaster? Utilizing the restroom. “I needed to use the washroom, and on the doors it said male and female, but I didn’t know which was which!” Anneesa recounted. Arend helpfully added, “In America, that wouldn’t be a problem, it’s free-for-all in the bathrooms, but now in our world it matters!” Seems, they’d assumed each check in Russia—a rustic with its personal language and alphabet—could be in English.
Additionally they hadn’t thought-about that Russia will get chilly within the winter—an astonishing revelation for individuals who emigrated from Canada—the nation well-known for hockey, snow, and temperatures that may freeze your eyelashes. Apparently, “traditional values” don’t embody checking the climate. They quickly wanted charity from locals to remain heat, which they accepted with out hesitation—as a result of when the freebies are for them, it’s simply good Christian fellowship, not the dreaded handouts they despise.
Then got here the monetary hiccup: Russia doesn’t settle for Visa or Mastercard as a result of Ukraine Battle sanctions, and their new Russian checking account was frozen after a big switch. The language barrier made it almost unimaginable to repair.
On YouTube—due to course they doc each misstep on-line—Anneesa broke down in tears. “I’m very disappointed in this country at this point. I’m ready to jump on a plane and get out of here,” she sobbed. “We’ve hit the first snag where you have to engage logic in this country and it’s very, very frustrating.”
However Russia isn’t the land of the free or the courageous, they usually shortly discovered that public criticism of the nation will not be inspired. The video vanished, changed with a groveling apology: Anneesa hadn’t meant she was dissatisfied in Russia, they clarified, simply “very frustrated in this country right now.”
By the point a Christian Science Monitor reporter visited, Arend had mastered the artwork of being a mannequin topic of an authoritarian regime. Requested about Putin and Russia’s political system, he dutifully prevented any criticism, as a substitute echoing state propaganda. “I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like Putin,” he mentioned. “Government here works together with the people for a common goal.”
The Villa household
Okay, this one isn’t MAGA, however extra of a sufferer of Russia’s propaganda.
Francine Villa, a Black girl disillusioned by systemic racism and police violence within the U.S., determined the reply was to maneuver someplace she believed race didn’t matter. That someplace, in accordance with her, was her start nation of Russia. She relocated in 2019 and shortly grew to become a darling of Russian state media—smiling in interviews, praising the nation’s racial concord, and holding herself up as residing proof that Western criticism of Russia was overblown. For the Kremlin, she was gold: a strolling, speaking rebuttal to accusations of Russian racism.
However propaganda stardom has a brief shelf life. As soon as the picture ops had been over, actuality got here crashing in. Her neighbors tried to stop her from coming into her condo and attacked her—beating her and her child and shouting racial slurs. The police did nothing, after all. Not a report filed, not an arrest made.
Villa later posted a video on-line displaying her face swollen and bruised, eyes puffy from crying, detailing the assault and the official indifference. The nation she’d praised as a racial protected haven revealed itself as a spot the place racism isn’t simply tolerated, it’s a part of the furnishings. After all, she asks for “help,” although who is meant to render that assist in her racial utopia is unclear.
Villa had fled a rustic with imperfect however current civil rights protections for one the place she had none—and located herself deserted by the very system she helped promote. In America, she may need had a lawyer. In Russia, perhaps she ought to strive the Hare household’s strategy and name Jesus.
