Russian propagandist television and journalists affiliated with it have been actively involved in the negative coverage of the pro-European protests that began in Georgia on 28 November 2024. Representatives of this kind of “media” freely enter the country and broadcast their propaganda, record vlogs and videos.
One such “journalist” that attracted public attention is the pro-Russian blogger and influencer Patrick Lancaster, who has recorded several videos in Tbilisi.
Lancaster gained notoriety by covering ongoing conflicts in Eastern Europe, especially the Russia-Ukraine war. Prior to this, he was engaged in propagandist coverage of the events of the annexation of Crimea (2014) and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020). Lancaster hails from the United States of America, from Missouri. He served in the US Navy in 2001-2006. In 2014, he moved to Ukraine, to the city of Donetsk. There, he was creating content for media funded by the Kremlin, such as “RT” and “Zvezda”. In 2017, Lancaster married a local woman in Donetsk. The wedding ceremony received widespread coverage in Russian media, with Lancaster being dressed in the colors of the Donetsk separatist flag.[i]
Patrick Lancaster in Donbas.
Lancaster is distinguished by his use of so-called “black propaganda” and disinformation, manipulation, deliberate changes to narratives, and staged scenes. For example, to cover alleged crimes committed by Ukrainians, Lancaster used bodies from a morgue. On 22 February 2022, 2 days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, bodies were placed in a specially detonated car on the Horlivka-Donetsk road, as if this was how "Bandera" (which is how Russian propaganda refers to Ukrainian fighters) attacked civilians.[ii] As subsequently revealed by the investigative journalists from Bellingcat, these persons had not died because of the explosion, and the car had been artificially damaged.[iii] Similar staged facts have been used by the Russian state to justify the war, as if Ukrainian nationalists in the Donbas region had been attacking the peaceful population.
5 years ago Patrick Lancaster was present in occupied Abkhazia to cover the “presidential elections”. He published multiple YouTube videos while there. He interviewed the presidential candidate as well as the locals, stating in some videos that Germany may recognize the independence of Abkhazia.[iv] His questions to locals were mainly about the quality of life in Abkhazia and their attitudes towards Russia and Georgia. As such, he has committed a confirmed violation of the Law of Georgia “On Occupied Territories”, which carries the penalty of a fine or imprisonment, although the propagandist has likely not faced the consequences of the law.
Patrick Lancaster in Abkhazia, 2019. Subtitle: This is Gagra, Abkhazia.
Coverage of the Tbilisi Protests by Lancaster
Lancaster primarily uses his YouTube channel for his propaganda purposes. The channel currently has 695,000 subscribers and 2000 videos.[v] The channel is aimed at English-speaking audiences, with Russia spreading propagandist messages to them through these means. Lancaster refers to himself as a fully “crowdfunded” independent journalist, claiming that his source of income is monetization of his videos and donations. So far, Patrick Lancaster has recorded up to 10 videos about the ongoing pro-European protests in Georgia, with the first dated December 4th.
In the videos recorded in Tbilisi, Lancaster uses all possible means to discredit the protests. He shows and interviews only the part of the Georgian public that is opposed to the protests, concluding that the majority of the Georgian population does not support the movement. Interestingly, the majority of the people questioned in these videos respond positively to the journalist’s question on whether they want to see Georgia as part of Europe.[vi]
Lancaster recorded an interview with a lawyer supporting “Georgian Dream” Gela Nikolaishvili, who sees events from the perspective of the party and parrots all of the anti-Western propaganda messages that have been circulating in the Georgian information spaces over the past months.[vii]
It should be noted that on December 9 some of the protest participants recognized Lancaster and asked him to leave the territory.[viii] Some Georgian propaganda agencies wrote that aggressive protesters expelled Italian and British journalists, without mentioning the real actions.[ix]
Lancaster generally presents the Georgian protests according to the so-called “methods” of the Russian special forces. The titles and messages in the first screen contain propaganda content. For example, one of the videos is titled: “Foreigners, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Others at Georgian Protests”.[x] The title of the video is intriguing, but the title and the contents of the video do not match one another, and the video contains only several seconds showing the representatives of the various confessions in their united march. In the same video, the propagandist first speaks to a female protester, who discusses violence by the police. In the second part, he speaks with one Gerardo from Argentina, who states that he is surprised that the protesters want to “repeat Ukraine” in Georgia, although he is apparently not surprised by the West’s attempt to open a second front.
Lancaster is a mouthpiece of traditional Russian propaganda. He spread disinformation that the protests in Georgia are being organized by the West. He claims that NATO and the European Union fund the protests through non-governmental organizations.[xi] Lancaster assures viewers that he is covering the real situation. He claims that members of his team are being “doxxed”, i.e. their private information is being posted publicly. At the same time, Lancaster claims that he is being threatened, which he paints as a restriction of free speech.[xii]
Alongside YouTube, Lancaster is active on Telegram.[xiii] He posts information about his work there along with posts of various content. The Telegram channel extensively discusses the meeting with Nana Kakabadze, a representative of the non-governmental organization "Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights", which is now a member of "United Neutral Georgia". Nana Kakabadze highlighted the systematic misuse of NGOs by Western powers to influence Georgian politics. Lancaster states in the same post that he detected skepticism when speaking to the older generation and that only a small portion of the population supported the protest.
“Nana highlighted the importance of maintaining a neutral policy in Georgia considering its small size and strategic position. She criticized what she called “liberal fascism”, which originated from the West, which, in her opinion, is forcing Georgia to deny its traditions and values in favor of the Western ideological framework.”
They also discussed double standards and sovereignty. Kakabadze discussed what she sees as a clear double standard in Western politics. For example, despite the fact that the US has laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which regulates organizations receiving foreign funds, Georgia’s attempt to implement a similar law has been called Russian-style by Western critics. She argues that these laws are critical to ensuring sovereignty and the transparent use of foreign funding.
Conclusion
In the end, Lancaster is yet another Russian propagandist that has been given free reign to enter Georgia, move and work inside the country, despite having violated the Law of Georgia “On Occupied Territories”. This at a time when there have been numerous confirmed cases of opposition-minded Russian journalists being turned back from the border on unsubstantiated grounds and denied entry. Several propagandists like Lancaster have made their presence known in the November 2024 protests. Their style is similar: by repeating Kremlin messages and the narratives of the “Georgian Dream”, smearing the protests, and mainly talking to people who will repeat their narratives, the Kremlin and Russian special services are trying to shape public opinion in Russia (and in Lancaster’s case, in the West, since he is English-speaking) and further undermine Georgia’s resilience in the face of a large-scale hybrid war.
[i]https://tvzvezda.ru/news/201708051546-kz2q.htm
[ii]https://zaborona.com/en/from-the-lancaster-family-the-story-of-an-american-reporter-who-settled-in-the-dnr-was-a-friend-of-givi-and-uses-morgue-bodies-for-fake-news/
[iii]https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/28/exploiting-cadavers-and-faked-ieds-experts-debunk-staged-pre-war-provocation-in-the-donbas/
[iv]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVolZ8rFcwo
[v]https://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLancasterNewsToday/videos
[vi]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnnSnbVnxZI
[vii]https://youtu.be/fmelNbGk-zs?si=w0xe1urQ6IQikc6E
[viii]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y2Nb-VVl44
[ix]https://mythdetector.com/ka/zhurnalisti-demonstrantebi-aqtsiidan-agdeben/
[x]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMmKcWmuoOk
[xi]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbjTWVaRx6jMN5ZYgbqe2_w/community?lb=Ugkxuea_XxLVfpze8_mtv4_4RM0MoUNklmpE
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