Introduction
Patrick Lancaster is an American YouTuber, influencer, and former US Navy sailor. Lancaster first attained notoriety due to his YouTube videos on the Russo-Ukrainian War with videos posted from the Donbas since 2014, initially as a cameraman, and then the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since 2020.
Lancaster attempts to position himself as an "independent crowdfunded journalist", yet he has been widely described as a pro-Kremlin propagandist. His videos have often been cited by western media, and used by western agencies, due to their inadvertently exposing secret, and compromising Russian military information. Lancaster has also frequently been accused of filming staged scenes of shelling.
Although Lancaster is generally considered pro-Kremlin, he supported the2023 Wagner armed uprising against the Russian Government. In his videos, Lancaster refers to the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions under Russian occupation as being 'part of Ukraine'.
Biography
Early life and US Navy
Lancaster is originally from Missouri in the United States of America. From 2001 to 2006 he was a sailor in the US Navy specializing as a cryptologic technician and rising to the rank of petty officer third class. He sailed on the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) from 2002 to 2006.
Ukraine
According to Lancaster, he arrived in Ukraine in March 2014 to cover the aftermath of the Maidan revolution. He then settled in Donetsk later that year, after meeting the woman who would become his wife. He converted to Orthodox Christianity.
Lancaster has worked for several Kremlin-backed media outlets, including RT and Zvezda, covering the war in Donbas. From 2014-15 in Donbas, Lancaster worked as a cameraman for British journalist Graham Phillips. Phillips has later been highly critical of Lancaster, writing in 2022 that Lancaster is an“illiterate, grifting charlatan, with a journalistic acumen and ability lower than a potted plant.”
From 2015 on, Lancaster has mostly created videos for his own YouTube channel. In his videos, Lancaster regularly asks his viewers for money, claiming himself to be the 'only journalist', or 'only western journalist' at locations where this was repeatedly proven not to be the case. This, and Lancaster's repeated filming of staged scenes, has led to multiple accusations of his dishonesty. Lancaster's videos have frequently, inadvertently, exposed information of Russian war crimes, revealing locations, identities of perpetrators, and sensitive Russian military information. The information inadvertently exposed by Lancaster has been successfully used by Ukrainian and western agencies against Russia.
Lancaster has often appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' InfoWars show. Research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified him as one of the twelve key Western influencers spreading pro-Kremlin disinformation about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Ukrainian media outlet Zaborona investigated his links to the Kremlin, reporting his connection to Eric Kraus, a pro-Putin French businessman who is close to Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council.
MH17
Lancaster has created and published multiple videos connected to the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and has received strong criticism for his actions in relation to MH17. In 2017 Lancaster claimed to have found skeletal remains of victims of the shoot-down of MH17 and pieces of the wreckage which he, after a request from the Joint Investigation Team, turned over to the local mayor with the request to transport them to The Netherlands. After investigation by the Netherlands Forensic Institute the remains were found to contain remnants of 7 passengers, 4 of which were Dutch. In 2018, relatives of the victims of the shoot-down expressed anger that Lancaster continued to show imagery of remains of the victims online. They believed he was using them in a campaign to acquit Russia from the shoot-down. In the Russian media the discovery of the remains by Lancaster was portrayed as evidence of the Dutch authorities having examined the crash site poorly and not caring for the relatives. In Ukrainian and Dutch media, Lancaster has been criticised for making propaganda out of the tragedy, insensitivity towards victims, and exploitation of the tragedy for personal gain.
The Dutch authorities have repeatedly urged Lancaster to turn over all his findings, but as of July 2023, he had yet to do so.
2022 to present
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vice Media and NBC News described him as the most popular of the pro-Kremlin influencers spreading Russian propaganda and disinformation on YouTube. According to Bellingcat, the scene in at least one of Lancaster's videos was staged. An August 2022 investigation by Bellingcat found that one of Lancaster's YouTube videos showed the presence of, and helped identify, a Russian soldier suspected of torturing and castrating a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
Lancaster's videos on the conflict have regularly been aired by Russian state owned media like Ruptly, Zvezda, and RT. Earlier in the conflict, his videos were featured on international media like the Associated Press, ITN, Skynews, Reuters, SPIEGEL TV. In 2022 Lancaster's sole 'international' outlet has been conspiracy theory website InfoWars.
Lancaster's videos from Ukraine gained considerable attention until July 2022, when Lancaster's output became sporadic. He then left Ukraine for an extended period, occasionally posting videos from Armenia. In October 2022, he returned to Ukraine, posting videos to his YouTube channel, and doing podcasts.
Lancaster did a video report from Rostov-on-Don on the Wagner Group rebellion, where he said that "the people of Rostov were with Wagner, and I was with Wagner". Lancaster's video included a brief interview with Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin; Prigozhin stated that he evaluated the results of the rebellion as a "normal result" and "everyone was cheered up", in reply to Lancaster's question. Lancaster also talked with several citizens, and provided his own (positive) views on the rebellion.
Lancaster continued blogging from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine in July, and August, before returning to Armenia in September.