It was late March, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was going poorly. The Kremlin had done its best to black out Western coverage of the war domestically, as well as its reports of failed Russian advances and widespread brutality.
On the Kremlin’s flagship media channel, Russia-1, came a very different, ghoulish story: from Russian-occupied Ukraine, an “exclusive” report alleging Ukrainian militants brutally raped and murdered a Ukrainian woman and disfigured her corpse.
In the footage, a correspondent follows a pro-Russian separatist soldier into a school basement in Mariupol to view the corpse of a dead woman. The body’s hands appear bound, and a plastic bag is over its head. The body is partially covered by what’s described as a Ukrainian military uniform; a swastika appears either burned or carved into the corpse’s exposed skin.
The video contained no evidence to identify the culprit of the heinous crimes, and Ukrainian officials have said they were committed by Russian forces, noting evidence of similar atrocities had surfaced in other Russian-held areas. For Russia-1′s story, that was irrelevant: To them, this was a Ukrainian atrocity and underscored Putin’s claimed mission to “denazify” Ukraine.
The reporter on the scene wasn’t Russian but was Missouri-born Patrick Lancaster, 39, a U.S. Navy intelligence veteran and self-styled “independent, crowd-funded journalist.” Over the years, he’s shown a knack for being first on the scene to capture what appeared to be staged evidence benefiting Kremlin narratives. He has also courted an audience of American conspiracy theory enthusiasts by appearing on Alex Jones’ radio show, which promotes falsehoods like Joe Biden stealing the 2020 presidential election.
Lancaster’s work has become a regular feature of Russian state media. His footage and commentary have appeared on Russia Today, a state-run English-language channel; Russia-1 and Russia-24, two of the flagship state-owned Russian language channels; and Zvezda, a channel owned by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
In Ukraine, he enjoys access to Russian-controlled territories, where he is often the only English-speaking reporter. In his videos, he sometimes appears to accompany Russian military. In one recent video posted to his Telegram channel, he dons a white strap around his arm and leg, a form of identification used by Russian soldiers to recognize one another. He tells the camera if he didn’t do this, he has been informed he could be mistaken for a Ukrainian soldier and shot. On Telegram, pro-Russian trolls encourage users to support Lancaster’s work.
Just prior to Russia’s invasion, Lancaster was one of the first to report on an alleged “terrorist attack” on three civilians, purportedly carried out by Ukraine. In his coverage, he uncritically repeats what he appears to have been told by Russian military: Ukrainian saboteurs had detonated an improvised explosive device from the side of the road.
In this case, the scene appears to have been so lazily constructed that Lancaster’s own footage captures apparent evidence of the lie: his images of the remains inside the vehicle revealed an impossibly clean cut along the front of one “victim’s” skull, consistent with an autopsy. Grid confirmed with experts at the time that this was the case, and subsequent reporting further established the truth: This was not evidence of an IED attack, and the bodies appeared to have been sourced from a morgue.
As far back as 2014, Lancaster was shooting and posting videos from the region, including a dubious piece meant to challenge the veracity of the investigation into a civilian airliner shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile.
Lancaster is one node in an elaborate network of propagandists Putin and his allies have exploited for years to maintain Putin’s support with the Russian public and beyond. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has used a heavy-handed media campaign to paint Ukraine as a nation overrun by Nazis and in need of liberation by Russian forces. The strategy has boosted Putin’s approval ratings even as the economy craters, news stations are forced off the air and the military suffers enormous losses.
https://www.grid.news/story/misinformation/2022/04/18/russias-favorite-war-propagandist-is-a-navy-veteran-from-missouri/
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