Patrick Lancaster

Patrick Lancaster is an American YouTuber, former US Navy sailor, and a self-described 'independent crowdfunded journalist' who has been embedded with the Russian army while reporting on the Russo-Ukrainian War. He has been posting video reports from the Donbas since 2014 and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict since 2020. His videos have frequently described as Russian propaganda and disinformation, and he has also often unwittingly exposed information of Russian war crimes, and knowingly filmed staged events.

Biography

Lancaster is from Missouri. 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.

Russo-Ukrainian War reporting

According to Lancaster, he arrived in Ukraine in March of 2014 to cover the Maidan revolution, and settled in Donetsk later that year, after meeting the woman who would become his wife. Since taking up residence there, he worked for several Kremlin-backed media outlets, covering the War in Donbas.

In 2017 Lancaster claimed to have found skeletal remains of victims of the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 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. The Ukrainian authorities accused him of spreading propaganda for pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. 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 2018, relatives of the victims of the shoot-down expressed anger with the fact that Lancaster continued to show imagery of remains of the victims online. They also believed he was using them in a campaign to acquit Russia from the shoot-down. The Dutch authorities urged Lancaster to turn over what he found, but as of September 2018 he had not done so yet.

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vice Media and NBC News describe 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.

In March 2022 Lancaster uploaded a video in which he, along with soldiers, walks through streets of Mariupol which appear to be occupied by pro-Russian separatists and the Russian military. An August 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.

Earlier in his career in Donbas, Lancaster worked as a cameraman for British journalist Graham Phillips, however 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.”

Lancaster's videos on the conflict have regularly been aired by Russian state owned media like Ruptly, Zvezda, and RT, as well as international media like the Associated Press, ITN, Skynews, Reuters, SPIEGEL TV, and conspiracy theory website InfoWars. He reportedly enjoys access to Russian-controlled territories, where he is often the only English-speaking reporter.

See also

• Eva Bartlett
• Graham Phillips (journalist)
• Russian information war against Ukraine