Russia Wants to Build a MAGA Colony for US Conservatives, Lawyer Claims

Plans are underway in Russia to build a settlement for conservative American and Canadian immigrants seeking to leave the West “for ideological reasons,” at least according to a Moscow-based immigration lawyer.

Timur Beslangurov, a partner in the law firm VISTA Immigration, claimed that construction would begin next year on a village in the Moscow region for about 200 families from North America, financed by the immigrants themselves.

“The reason is propaganda of radical values: Today they have 70 genders, and who knows what will come next,” he said in comments at a legal forum in St Petersburg, which were reported by Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. No evidence has been provided publicly for the claims, and it’s not 100 percent clear what Beslangurov’s role in the reported project is.

VICE News contacted Beslangurov asking for further information on the reported project, and to speak with some of the hundreds of potential Western immigrants he said existed to help verify his claims, but he replied that he wasn’t able to provide further information “at this stage.” 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has wooed Western right-wingers and conservatives by positioning himself as a staunch defender of a traditionalist, Christian European identity, resulting in pro-Russian narratives about the invasion of Ukraine becoming widespread in far-right and conspiracist networks. 

READ: How Russia weaponised the far-right

In public appearances, Putin has often pushed conservative positions on hot-button culture war issues such as trans rights, telling a forum in Sochi in October 2021 that children in the West were “taught that a boy can become a girl and vice versa” and that such messaging was “on the verge of a crime against humanity.” The affinity between the Russian state and the US right was on full display after Fox sacked ultra-right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson last month, prompting a leading Kremlin propagandist and Russian state TV anchor Vladimir Solovyov to publicly express his admiration for the US TV personality.

READ: Revealed: A neo-Nazi band played a private gig for Russian troops

“You have our admiration and support in any endeavour you choose for yourself next, be it running for president of the United States (which you probably should totally do, by the way) or making an independent media project,” Solovyov said in an email to Carlson posted to Telegram. “We’ll happily offer you a job if you wish to carry on as a presenter and host!”