Politixia
Last August, we laughed at the travails of a group of Americans who decided MAGA America had become too liberal, packed up their families, and moved to the conservative paradise of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Predictably, things did not go according to plan.
Let’s check in on our favorite anti-woke émigrés and see how they’re doing.
The Hare family
When we last checked in on the Hare family, led by a Texas couple who fled America because they claimed their children were exposed to “too many lesbians,” they had discovered that moving to Putin’s Russia wasn’t quite the conservative paradise they’d imagined.
Unable to find stable housing or work, they spent months relying on churches and the generosity of strangers—the same sort of assistance they’d likely have dismissed as “handouts” had it been provided by the U.S. government. Then they poured nearly all of their savings into what appears to be a dubious business venture that quickly began unraveling. Rather than accept they’d apparently been scammed, the Hares insisted that either \Putin would personally intervene to recover their money or, failing that, “Jesus is our lawyer.”
This update, focused on family patriarch Leo Hare, is just as entertaining.
“When I spoke to Leo earlier this year, he was living separately from his wife in the city of Ivanovo, and his older children had returned to the United States,” reported the BBC. “Asked whether Russia had lived up to his expectations, Leo describes the last two years as the best and worst of his life.”
Sure, his wife seems to have left him, two of his children fled back to the United States, and his life savings disappeared into what appears to have been a scam. “[In] Russia you don’t have these human rights values,” he said. Still, Leo said he planned to stay because it’s his “destiny.”
His children, meanwhile, voted with their feet. The Hares fled America to save their children. Their children fled Russia to save themselves.
The Huffman family
The Huffman family fled famously woke Texas because their daughter learned that lesbians exist and they claimed they were facing discrimination for being a white Christian family, believing that Putin’s Russia would be a haven for their values.
Instead, their search for a conservative utopia took a disastrous turn. Hoping to speed up his path to Russian citizenship, Derek Huffman enlisted in the Russian military expecting a safe support role. Despite speaking virtually no Russian and having no military experience, he was handed a rifle, rushed through basic training, and sent toward the Ukrainian front. As his wife publicly pleaded for help and admitted she’d resumed drinking under the stress, the family’s dream had become a nightmare.
Well, it turns out Derek is more valuable to Putin as a propaganda prop than as cannon fodder.
Instead of disappearing into the trenches, he’s being paraded around Russia as proof that Americans are fleeing the “woke West” for Putin’s traditional-values paradise. Never mind that his own family publicly begged for help just months earlier.
The Feenstra family
These Canadian farmers fled to Russia to escape what they saw as creeping acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, yet the Feenstras quickly discovered they were woefully unprepared for life there. They arrived without speaking Russian, struggled with basic tasks, found themselves relying on locals for warm clothing and other necessities, and ran into financial trouble after sanctions froze access to their money.
When Anneesa tearfully declared on YouTube that she was “very disappointed” in Russia and wanted to leave, the video quickly disappeared, replaced by an apology. Before long, Arend had learned a valuable lesson about life under authoritarianism, publicly insisting he’d “yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like Putin.”
It turns out Canada isn’t so bad after all, though. In a video posted two months ago, Arend said they had temporarily moved back because he was earning “a lot more money” in North America than he ever could in Russia. He also misses being able to visit friends.
But the trips back are expensive. Going from Russia to Canada and back cost $25,000, he said. Plus, he didn’t have much farm equipment in Russia, so he needed money for that too.
What are the odds they keep making these trips back home? Do they, one day, just decide to stay?
As the BBC has reported, Russia’s program to lure “anti-woke” Westerners has been a bit of a flop. According to the nation’s figures, just 99 Americans applied to take part between August 2024 and May 2025.
Yet, for the Kremlin, success was never really about attracting large numbers of immigrants. A handful of willing Westerners with YouTube channels and compelling origin stories are far more valuable as propaganda than as actual settlers. They can be trotted out on state television to “prove” that even Americans are fleeing liberal decadence for Putin’s Russia.
The irony is that many of them got exactly what they claimed they wanted. The Russian government wasn’t interested in helping them find housing, jobs, or financial stability. If they succeeded, great. If they failed, that was their problem. It turns out the conservative ideal of radical self-reliance loses some of its appeal when you’re the one relying on church charity, strangers’ generosity, and crowdfunding to survive.
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