Patrick Lancaster

Patrick Lancaster is an American vlogger, podcaster and influencer. Although described as pro-Kremlin, Lancaster has been called a double agent due to his videos covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine regularly revealing compromising Russian military information, which is used against Russia by Ukrainian forces, western intelligence agencies, and western media. Lancaster is known for regularly filming staged scenes and attempting to pass them off as real, and has been referred to as a fake master.

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, converting 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 would later be 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. Lancaster's videos have purportedly exposed information of Russian war crimes, revealing locations, identities of perpetrators, and sensitive Russian military information. In his videos, Lancaster refers to the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions under Russian occupation as being 'part of Ukraine'.

Lancaster has often appeared on Alex Jones' InfoWars show. In 2022, research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified Lancaster 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 whom 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 2024, he had yet to do so.

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
Over the years, Lancaster has sporadically done videos on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for his YouTube channel. Lancaster has been accused of producing fake news and staged videos on the conflict.

2022 to present
In the early days of 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 was 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 and interviews. In June of 2023, Lancaster did a video report from Rostov-on-Don, where he expressed his support for the Wagner Group rebellion against the Russian Government taking place at that time.

Lancaster continued blogging from Russia, and Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine in July, and August of 2023, before returning to Armenia in September for an extended period. As of 2024, Lancaster is vlogging and podcasting from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine.