Patrick Lancaster From the Frontlines of Ukraine/Russia War: Kamikaze Drones & Attacks on Christians

Over the past years, countless American journalists have embedded with Zelensky’s military. On the Russian side, there’s only one: Patrick Lancaster. (00:00) Introduction (01:15) The War Started Much Earlier Than You Think (05:07) The Ukrainian Attacks on the Hometown of Lancaster’s Wife (19:47) Kamikaze Attack Drones (27:52) How Many People Have Died in this War? (37:59) Russia’s Attempt to House Victims of War Paid partnerships with: Identity Guard: Get a 30-day free trial and over 60% off when you sign up at https://IdentityGuard.com/Tucker Cozy Earth: https://CozyEarth.com/Tucker code TUCKER Policygenius: Head to at https://Policygenius.com/Tucker to see how much you could save PreBorn: To donate please dial pound two-fifty and say keyword "BABY" or visit https://preborn.com/TUCKER Subscribe to Patrick Lancaster's Substack Blog: https://patricklancasternewstoday.substack.com/subscribe. YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/c/PatrickLancasterNewsToday . Support Patrick's Journalism here https://buymeacoffee.com/plnewstoday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Tucker Carlson?

  Over the past three years, hundreds, maybe thousands of Western journalists have covered the war in Ukraine from Ukraine and effectively been attached to the Ukrainian government and its military and its many propaganda outlets, taking their talking points from Ukrainian government officials, interviewing President Zelensky, always in the most fawning possible way, and effectively carrying water for both the Ukrainian government and NATO, and above all, for the Biden administration. On the other side, in this war that the United States has effectively paid for, there is one Western journalist, one American embedded with Russian troops. His name is Patrick Lancaster.

• 1:14Tucker Carlson?

  He's from St. Louis, Missouri. He's a US Navy veteran. And for the past 11 years, he's been reporting from the region. For the past three years, he's been reporting from the front lines. He's been interviewed by precisely no other mainstream Western media organizations. And so it raises the question, how can you understand a war you're expected to take sides in and then pay for if you're not hearing the other side? So with that in mind, here's Patrick Lancaster. Patrick Lancaster, thank you so much for joining us. So you're one of the only, maybe the only, American reporter embedded with Russian troops in this war. How long have you been there?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Hi, Tucker. It's really an honor to be on here with you to show a little bit to the world about what the mainstream media does amongst a lot of the people around the world to see. So it's really great and I appreciate the invitation. I have been covering this conflict, this war, for a lot longer than many people understand that it's going on. As you know, this didn't start three years ago. It started in 2014. Some say even before, but for all intensive purposes, we could say 2014, when the war started, following

• 2:43Speaker 02

  the events in Crimea, where Crimea rejoins Russia, because there was a referendum. That's where I first started reporting on the situation between Russia and Ukraine. I went to Crimea for the referendum where the Crimean people voted to break away from Ukraine and join Russia, or rejoin Russia, because before 1956, Crimea was part of Russia. So if you think about this, the people that were born before that year were born in Russia. So there's people living that were born in Russia, that were literally so happy to be joining Russia

• 3:28Speaker 02

  again, going home, as the people on the streets told me when I was there. And I've been there almost every year, reporting since then as well. But that's what really triggered my interest and intensity in reporting on the situation between Ukraine and Russia, because when I went from Europe to Crimea and saw the huge difference of what was being reported in the Western mainstream media about the real situation in Crimea, we're hearing in the West how Russia forces were going to be making people vote to break away from Ukraine and join Russia. And I saw just the total opposite, people just crying out of happiness to have the chance to rejoin Russia.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  And those are the real facts and anyone that has been to Crimea knows that. And anyone that says something besides that is just not telling the truth and trying to hide the truth. And unfortunately, after the events in Crimea where they joined the northern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk ended up becoming part of what you could say a civil war where they as well had a referendum to break away from Ukraine. And that preceded the eight-year war, eight-year civil war. Where after the vote, the

• 4:54Speaker 02

  republics that they called themselves Donetsk and people, Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics started to make their own governments, make their own militaries. And they were attacked after this referendum by Ukraine. And I spent eight years covering the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Just documenting my part of the puzzle or the pie that wasn't being shown in the western mainstream media. Because what I was showing then and now, what western mainstream media doesn't, it's not convenient for them to show, doesn't fit their narrative. So I documented what they weren't.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  The indiscriminate shelling of residential areas by Ukraine. The targeting of civilian areas by Ukraine. I mean, my wife is from Donetsk and her childhood home was destroyed by Ukrainian shelling as well as the majority of her childhood neighborhood.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  So I mean, these are the facts of the things that happened in the Donetsk and Lugansk territories long before 2022, when Russia came into this war. From 2014 till 2022 is when this civil war took place. And of course, Ukraine and the West claimed Russia had invaded all the way back in 2014. That was the narrative then. But eventually, that kind of slowly went away when they realized that this eight-year war wasn't really, there was no regular Russian troops taking a part in that. This was a civil war that was lightly supported by the West,

• 6:44Speaker 02

  and Ukraine supported by the West.

• 6:47Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, may I ask you a question to clarify something? So you said that your wife's childhood home was destroyed by shelling from the Ukrainian government. Why were they shelling your wife's house? Like, was she, was her family part of the fighting? Why would they do that?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Well, they pretty much leveled most of her childhood home, or childhood neighborhood, where her mother's home was. This neighborhood is just one of the many around Donetsk, in the suburbs of Donetsk, and specifically around the Donetsk Airport. The Donetsk Airport was like a symbol of the war back in 2014, 2015, where there was literally so much fighting. There were two terminals. One terminal had the Ukrainian forces in it, one had the anti-Ukraine government forces, or rebels, or pro-Russian forces, whatever you would call them, the locals that took up

• 7:51Speaker 02

  arms to fight, to try to break away from Ukraine. And they were fighting. And basically, Ukraine leveled, not completely leveled, but damaged, if not destroyed, the majority of the homes all around this area, around the airport, just...

• 8:09Speaker 02

  With indiscriminate shelling and of the, uh, the areas, the neighborhoods and just destroying or seriously damaging almost every home. And it just so happened, my wife's, uh, childhood home was one of those. Uh, thank God her, uh, family, uh, and her made it out. Okay. They were living there when the war started. Um, and, uh, they, they made it out. Okay. But the house was, uh, destroyed. And this is just one example of many homes and families that lost everything in the war.

• 8:44Tucker Carlson?

  I, you know, I don't remember hearing in the United States at the time, um, that there was a war in Ukraine. I mean, my sense is this was basically ignored completely. And that Ukraine at that time was effectively under the control of, uh, of the Obama administration. That was my, that was my sense.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. A lot of people don't really, didn't really understand what was really happening on the ground. But, um, basically, I mean, it goes back to the, uh, Maidan Revolution or, uh, whatever you want to call it. It's all in the eye of the beholder. The locals in the eastern part of Ukraine at that point looked at the Maidan Revolution as an illegal coup supported by the West, uh, where ended up with their democratically elected president, Yadikovich, removed from office without them having anything to say about it and which effectively made their Ukraine dead and not in existence anymore after a puppet government

• 9:55Speaker 02

  was put in, um, by the United States in the West. So the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk, uh, areas just.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  They said, okay, well, that's not our Ukraine. Ukraine's gone. Some of them were patriots for Ukraine before. They, they just said, okay, we don't have anything to do with that. We're gonna have a vote. We're, uh, we're gonna vote ourselves what to do with the right of self-determination. And Ukraine and the West did not want to respect the right of determination. And Ukraine, basically, in the words of the locals, punished them for them trying to break away from Ukraine. And every local family knew someone or had a member of their family injured or killed in the attacks by Ukrainian forces on the civilian areas of these regions.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Specifically, the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk.

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• 14:16Tucker Carlson?

  So you've been there, rotating in and out, or living there ever since, all these years. How did things change three years ago when the war began?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Well, it was quite an interesting time, as you can imagine. Just days, a couple of days before the... It all started with Russia, Russia officially came in. Russia officially recognized the Lugansk and Donetsk republics as separate from Ukraine. And the people had celebrations on the streets, just celebrating the fact that Russia recognized them. And they knew that that meant that Russia was going to be helping these republics.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  And then, days later, Russia came across the border and the war between Ukraine and Russia started. You know, one way or the other, the war between Russia and the West started. Western weapons, at least. And as many people around the world thought it was going to go a lot quicker than it has, I myself did a report in the center of Donetsk, where I assumed and thought that Russia was going to be pushing Ukraine back within days from the city of Donetsk.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Because you have to imagine, the front line of Donetsk was just on the outskirts of the city. We're talking from the center of the city to the edge, just about to the front line, just about five miles, with often just straight shelling hitting the center of the city. And as we know, it didn't end in three days like General Milley said it would. And there were, there's been a lot of intense battles around these areas. And in fact, right now, I believe there is eight regions between...

• 16:37Speaker 02

  What is internationally recognized as Ukraine or Russia recognizes as Russia. But overall, there is eight regions that have active fighting. Some are Russian, some are pre-war Russian, after-war Russian, whatever you want to call it. We've got the Zaporozhye region, uh, uh, Kherson region, Donetsk region, and Lugansk region, which all four of those had referendums in 2022 September where they, the Russian-backed referendums unrecognized by the West, where they voted to, um, join Russia. And then shortly after, Russia took them in officially.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  And then in addition to those four regions, you've got, uh, two regions of, uh, Russia, the Belgrad region of Russia and the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukraine came across the territ- uh, the, uh, border and invaded, incurred on pre-2022 Russia. And in, actually, in the area of Kursk, they controlled last August about 1,500 square kilometers. Um, since then, it's been re- really, uh, reduced by Russian forces.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  But in addition to those six territories, we've also got the Sumy region of Ukraine, which there's some villages and some territory that Russia controls. And there's active, very intense, uh, fighting going on there. And now that's borders, the Kursk region. So basically, Russia went past the territory that was controlled by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia and took territory in the Sumy region. Now, also in the Kharkov region of Ukraine, Russia controls, uh, uh, some territory as well. And the, a- again, intense fighting going on there.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  So we've got eight regions with intense fighting, um, and, uh...

• 18:56Speaker 02

  The war keeps changing. So much has changed, of course, in the last 11 years as far as how the fighting has changed and how it's going on now. And even since 2022, when Russia first came in, and now, now the situation is the air war, the drone war. I mean, it's like the war of the future now compared to what it used to be 11 years ago. I mean, the most dangerous part of my job is actually getting to the front line to film what's happening on the front line because in the vehicles getting there is just, there's always drones around and these are kamikaze drones

• 19:41Speaker 02

  that are the main threat. Of course, there's reconnaissance drones as well, but these kamikazes, they will just hitch, they're hunting vehicles around and going back and forth on the front line. And they'll just hit the vehicle and explode. And now they've even gone a step forward where jamming or electronic warfare doesn't affect them because they use fiber optic cables to control these drones where this little bitty cable goes from behind the drone to the remote control. They're cabled drones and they could go up to 30 kilometers. And actually, this, this

• 20:24Speaker 02

  right here is some of the fiber optic cable that is used to control these drones.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And those are the most deadly on the front line because you can't do anything about it. You can't even detect them with a drone detector.

• 20:41Tucker Carlson?

  So what is that, what is that like? Have you, have you seen the kamikaze drones hit and explode?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Well, just, I guess, just over three weeks ago, I was in the Kursk region of Russia, trying to actually get back from the front line. And I was with a team from the Russian forces Akmat Brigade, and they were evacuating civilians from the front line. We actually got to the point of, as they called it, the point of zero, which the edge of the village where we were were the Ukrainian forces. And as we got there, there were several overhead, and they engaged one on the ground, and it came down. Wasn't that intense, you could say.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  So they loaded the civilians in this truck. So in the cab of the truck were these four elderly civilians, and the soldier that was driving. And then myself and another journalist, a colleague of mine, were in the back of the truck with two soldiers. And we were trying to evacuate this village. And as we got out of the, just outside the village, I happened to be filming one of the soldiers as they were scanning the skies, and the other soldier actually pointed up and said a drone and a few other curse words.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  And I looked up, and there was a drone, a kamikaze drone. Right away, I knew what it was, and I knew the danger we were in. And the soldiers started firing on it, engaging it, trying to knock it down as it was trying to attack us and kill us. And they signaled to the driver, and the driver just floored it. It was just driving as fast as possible. And I'm filming them shooting at the drone, and drones trying to hit us. I thought that we were gonna be, you know, worst-case scenario injured, because, I mean, it got so close to us as we were just driving, just got right up on us.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  And then, after about five minutes of it chasing us, well, what felt like five minutes, might have been a few minutes less, it was knocked down.

• 23:07Tucker Carlson?

  How do you knock down a drone? How do you knock down a suicide drone over you?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  They were engaging it with a shotgun and machine guns. And that's, it was coming at us. And it was in the video, it's a little bit unclear if their bullets actually hit it or it hit a wire that was going over the road. But for about five minutes, three minutes, something like that, they were firing at it with a shotgun and a machine gun. Now, the shotgun is the most, the new weapon of choice on the front line because it's got the buckshot and it spreads and these, uh, the idea is there's more room to hit, just like you're shooting at a bird. That's actually what they call these drones, birds.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Um, so they're, they go hunting with this shotgun for these drones. And luckily, thank God, God was with us, with us that day and, uh, it did not hit its target. Um, so we, we made it, uh, to report another day.

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• 26:28Tucker Carlson?

  So one of the, um, the, the most confusing questions in, in the West, uh, is the most obvious question, which is who's winning? And even now, we're told that Ukraine, you know, has a shot to win. Lindsey Graham has been saying this even recently. If only US taxpayers would send Zelensky's government more money. What's, um, what's your perspective as someone who's covering the war from the front lines?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Well, I think, uh, the idea of Ukraine winning the war, uh, is, uh, just this dream and narrative that's been put out by the West to...

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Make it acceptable for so much money to be putting put into Ukraine to extend this war, to bring Russian forces down in the country of Russia, just to make them use their resources more, including losing more people. I mean, if the United States and the West would not have been supplying the weapons and the funding to Ukraine for the last three years, the war would have ended three years ago, if not two and a half years ago. And hundreds of thousands

• 27:52Speaker 02

  of lives would have been saved. The funding and the support of the West for Ukraine is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of these deaths of soldiers on both sides, and civilians for that matter.

• 28:15Tucker Carlson?

  How many have died? The other question that we can never get a straight answer to, or any answer to, is how many have died on both sides? Do you have any guess?

• 28:28Speaker 02

  You know, it's hard for me to say. You know, my kind of thing in my reports is reporting of what I see, keeping my opinions out of it. So what I can tell you is of what I've seen. One of the hottest areas that I was been before Kursk and Belgrade, where I am now, was Mariupol frontline, where I followed the Russian frontline day by day in the heats of the Battle of Mariupol. And just that month, I personally saw...

• 29:06Speaker 02

  You know, between a thousand and two thousand bodies, and it was soldiers, civilians. I mean, the whole city was just covered in bodies. In a matter of a 30-minute period, one time I counted 87 bodies just lighting the streets. And I mean, it was really a horrible situation. And, you know, just seeing so many war crimes involved. So many testimonies from locals about Ukrainian forces. Basically, literally, these are not my words.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  These are the words of the locals, that everything I say can be seen on my YouTube channel. These locals say that Ukrainian forces literally used them as human shields, would set up their tanks in between the apartment buildings and fire at Russian forces. And in other cases, they would directly fire on the civilian buildings. Ukrainian forces directly firing on civilian buildings. This is what the locals told me on camera, and it can be seen, not just one-off. A constant daily event.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  And unfortunately, there was many instances of Ukrainian forces using schools as bases. One of my first days in Mariupol, found a school, school number 25 of Mariupol. I'll never forget it. Went into the basement and found that Ukrainian forces were using this basement as a position, military position. And many burned-out rooms and weapons, uniforms, flags, Ukrainian flags. And unfortunately, we found a dead civilian woman who is...

• 31:10Speaker 02

  She was naked and she had a bag over her head. It was clearly raped and tortured. And it was clearly a civilian from the area that Ukrainian forces had kidnapped and tortured and raped. And they carved, it's actually a little unclear whether it was burned or carved, a swastika on her stomach. And really, this is the first time that it stood out to me, the psychological effect of some of these instances when you see it. In my mind, I still remember seeing a bandage over her head, kind of like something like she was injured and it was bandaged.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  But if you look at the video, you see it was a plastic bag that was used to execute her. Now, that's just one of the many examples of executions that I've seen by Ukrainian forces. The most recent were in the Kursk region, just this last January, where I was with Russian regular army forces. And they had just days before gotten to this village and basically kicked Ukrainian forces out and the village was destroyed.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  And there was a shelter, a basement, basically, that we went down into and found a group of civilians. There was two elderly women and one elderly man that had been killed, clearly by Ukrainian forces, because as we walked down the steps, the smell was so bad, we had to put gas masks on. And at the bottom of the steps, we couldn't really say how many people, because it was clear that some sort of explosive, I assume a grenade, was thrown down in the shelter where these people were hiding.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  And the people near the door, actually with a dog that were there, were just...

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Turned into, you know, soup, basically. So it wasn't really clear how many were there. But then, as we went farther back into the shelter, found, as I said, a two elderly women that were killed by the explosion and an elderly man.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  And then, back in August, as I said, when Ukraine first came in to Kursk, I was also there and met a man who explained how he was trying to evacuate his family from the Suzha region, which was basically the stronghold of Ukrainian forces once they came into the Kursk region of Russia. And he explained how he was evacuating his wife, pregnant wife, their one-year-old son, and his wife's mother. And they had two vehicles. And this is, basically, they were surprised that war broke out in their village because they weren't part of the war zone before August.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And so he's decided he was gonna drive in the front car and have his family in the back with his wife driving behind, just in case something's happened. It would hit him first, and they might make it away. And they were, he said they were driving, came around a turn, and came face to face with a Ukraine or pro-Ukraine soldier. He said just two meters away from him. He said, "There was no way that the soldier did not see that they were civilians. There was no question they were civilians." And the soldier opened fire. The bullet went through the bill of his cap and a few into his vehicle.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And they kept on driving as they were being fired at and got some distance between and went around another corner. And these are his words, not mine.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  And he saw that his wife's vehicle was slowing down. Waited for to, to, uh, speed up. And then when her car hit the back of his car, he knew something was wrong. And, uh, he went back to check on his family in the other car. And his wife, pregnant wife was huddled over their one-year-old son with bullet holes in her, the side of her stomach. And, uh, he picked her up, took her to the nearest hospital they could find. And, uh, uh, they weren't able to save her. He tried to do CPR and his words, massage her heart back to life. And their, their, uh, one-year-old son was injured, but thank God, uh, he lived.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  And then unfortunately, he wasn't able to recover her body for many months afterwards. Um, but now things have changed quite considerably in the Kursk, uh, region. As I said, it started in August with Ukraine, just surprising many coming across, taking 1,500 square kilometers. Uh, and then right when they did that, Russia started taking some back. And I was with them, I went with the assault groups, uh, to the Ukrainian, uh, lines as the assault groups took territory back. Um, and, uh, they, Russia started going and going and going and taking these, uh, villages, uh, back.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  And it almost slowed down as far as the recovery of the territory by Russian forces. Uh, until last month, when an operation of Russian forces literally went into these gas pipes. And they tunneled underneath Ukrainian lines and reported 600, uh, Russian, uh, forces, soldiers. Came up behind Ukrainian lines and, uh, that operation with a, an assault from the other side. Basically collapsed Ukrainian lines. And now there's just a very small amount of Ukrainian forces left in the Kursk region.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  And just yesterday, there were, uh, a report from the Russian Ministry of Defense. That some territory had been taken, uh, back by, uh, Russian, uh, forces. Now, uh, unfortunately, this is leaving.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Tens of thousands of people homeless, that homes were destroyed in this

• 37:55Speaker 02

  incursion or invasion by Russian forces or Ukrainian forces into this region of Russia. And basically, the standard

• 38:06Speaker 02

  thing for the Russian government to do is give certificates for new homes to the victims. They've actually gotten pretty good at it because there's so many regions of people that have been, had their homes lost by Ukrainian shelling. But one thing that I noticed, it's pretty interesting about what they're doing in the Kursk region. And on top of the certificates, it's getting compared to what the United States does when someone loses their house, say, to a national disaster. The governor of Kursk, Alexander Kinchting, started an initiative to request from Moscow

• 38:48Speaker 02

  a special stipend or payment of a monthly payment of 65,000 rubles for every member of a family whose home was lost, monthly. So the, I mean, that's 65,000, that's about 750 dollars. So if it's a family of four, that's about 3,000 dollars a month. You know, of course, that's not gonna, you know, replace everything in their lives that they'd lost. But it's a lot more than I think what was the United States giving to some of the natural disasters. I think 700 lump sum payments, something like that. So it's interesting to see the comparison.

• 39:29Tucker Carlson?

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• 41:50Tucker Carlson?

  /tucker. So let me ask, let me ask you, from our perspective over here, the Ukrainian government is not just at war with Russia, but also with Christianity. The Ukrainian government has banned the largest Christian denomination in Ukraine and has embraced transgenderism and other explicitly anti-Christian forms of expression. Are you aware of that? Are the Russians aware of that? Is there a religious component? Just because their hostility to Christianity is so obvious, I wonder if you notice it.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Well, um, in that, I always ask the soldiers on the front line who are documenting fighting, you know, what they're doing there, why are they fighting, what are they fighting for? And often, an answer that they're, they give is, is, they're fighting Satan. Because they, they view the, the religious atmosphere so different, as you point out, in Ukraine than the traditional Russian society, um, you know, so it's quite a,

• 43:08Speaker 02

  religion is very important to the Russian soldier. And of course, I think it's quite a bit more than, you know, the traditional, you say, uh, there's no atheists on the front line, but, uh, this goes a lot deeper into their cultural heritage.

• 43:24Tucker Carlson?

  Have you seen any North Korean soldiers?

• 43:30Speaker 02

  No, I have not. Not a, a lack of trying. I tried to investigate the reports of these North Korean soldiers, and I was not able to locate any of them. Of course, there's rumors all over the world of this, but I was not able to locate any of them.

• 43:51Tucker Carlson?

  How many American correspondents are embedded with Russian units that you're, that you know of?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Uh, one, me.

• 44:01Tucker Carlson?

  So no, no one from NBC, or CNN, or Fox, or PBS, or New York Times, Washington Post, you're not aware of any American correspondents covering the other side in this war?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 44:19Tucker Carlson?

  So, so, does it feel to you that American reporters have basically taken the side of the Biden administration, which told us that Russia is our enemy, and are uncritically repeating US government talking points?

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, I mean, of course, the Western media has their narrative. And, you know, unfortunately, they try to hide the facts that most of what I report, they tried to hide and not report on it. And, you know, I tell all my viewers, don't just watch my reports because I don't have all the answers, but I'm showing you what the mainstream media doesn't want you to see. I'm just giving you my piece of the puzzle, something that you're not going to see anywhere else, unfortunately.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  But, you know, people need to get as many perspectives as possible and educate themselves, not just be led like sheep by the mainstream media. And I'm very glad there's people like you out there as well that, you know, could give someone a little bit, something to think about other than just the narrative that is trying to be forced down their throat.

• 45:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I mean, if you're the only American correspondent embedded with Russian units, then I would think you would be in high demand. I'm embarrassed it's taken me over three years to talk to you. That's my fault. But I, I mean, I assume you're getting calls every week from American news organizations trying to understand what's happening?

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, no, they don't seem too interested in discussing things with me or seeing the information that I'm putting out. And in fact, in 2014, 15, and 16, I was what I would say is a freelance journalist, videographer as well, until, you know, I felt like my work was being betrayed and because I was...

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Giving this material and then, once I saw that the material was being lied about, I mean, one instance, I was in the Lugansk region in Parvomaisk when Ukrainian forces launched a rocket attack on this soup kitchen. And we happened to be there and I filmed in the aftermath and the women saying how Pereshenko was killing them and their families, just really horrible, just targeting civilians by Ukrainian forces with huge rockets. And I sold that material as a freelance journalist to Western outlets and they turned it around

• 47:30Speaker 02

  and said that it was Lugansk rebels that fired on this soup kitchen, just totally lying about the situation. So after that, I decided, I'm not gonna do that anymore. You know, regardless if I get paid for it or not, I'm gonna be showing exactly what I see. And that's what I've been doing since then is just on my YouTube channel, showing my reports. I'm only supported by my viewers. Of course, I'll do collaborations with other channels and things if, you know, they're interested, but I make it a point not to get paid by anyone but the donations from my viewers.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  So the only people that I report to, that I need to show what's really happening is my viewers. I don't have any editor or boss that says, "Oh, we need to show this or show this." No, I show in my reports on YouTube and my Substack blog exactly what's happening, exactly what I see, with no narrative, just the facts that the Western mainstream media isn't showing.

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• 50:39Speaker 04

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• 51:09Tucker Carlson?

  So since you've been there all these years and have a tactile sense of what's happening, give us a couple of examples of stories Americans may have seen or read in our media here that you know firsthand are wrong.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Well, we can, off the top of my head, the missile attack, Toshka U attack by Ukrainian forces on the center of Donetsk in 2022, when Ukraine launched a cluster bomb attack on the center of Donetsk and cluster bombs came down and actually hit just about 200 yards from my apartment where my family and kids and wife were. And my dad was actually in

• 52:07Speaker 02

  the city with us as well. And we had to throw the, we thought we were getting hit. We threw the bulletproof vests on the kids and threw one of the others under the bed. And I mean, it was, it was not good. And in the Western mainstream media, they said that it was a Russian attack, which is just idiotic. Why would Russia attack Donetsk? That hasn't been under Ukrainian control for the last eight years before that. I mean, just total grabbing

• 52:47Speaker 02

  of false information to try to portray a narrative that just is not true. And actually, that was my, the last day that my family was in Donetsk with me. I had to evacuate them as I stayed to show what was happening on the front line. My wife didn't want to leave, because as I said, my wife's from Donetsk, but I said after that, just so close to us, I had to evacuate them. And after that, I just, you know, kind of went solo and went back to my family when I could. And that's what I do. Even today.

• 53:26Tucker Carlson?

  Where are you from in the United States?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  I'm from St. Louis, Missouri.

• 53:34Tucker Carlson?

  Have you been back to the US during the last, over the last three years?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  In the last three years, no, I have not.

• 53:44Tucker Carlson?

  Um, how is YouTube treating you?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't been monetized on YouTube, basically at all. I started my YouTube channel in 2014 and there's no monetization whatsoever.

• 54:04Tucker Carlson?

  Why? On what grounds were you demonetized?

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, it's been literally over a decade ago, but I believe just the fact of war and,

• 54:19Speaker 02

  you know, they're just not interested on putting commercials on my material. Um, I guess because it doesn't fit the Western mainstream narrative, but,

• 54:31Speaker 02

  you know, it's great that I'm still able to use the platform to show the world some of the things that's happening, but unfortunately it's not monetized. So I'm only supported by, as I said, my, my viewers through donations, but you know what I do, it's not really because of the money. Yeah, of course I've got to support my family, but you know, as I said, after I saw the, how different what was being shown in the West, what was happening, I just had to do something about it. And you know, if you would ask me before 12 years ago, would I be a war correspondent, you know, going to the front lines with, you know,

• 55:14Speaker 02

  showing the reality of what's happening and I'd be the only one doing it. It's just, would be, uh, amazing to me.

• 55:23Tucker Carlson?

  What, I mean, given the atrocities that you've, you've seen some incredibly ugly things, you described a few of them, um, but it's been so long. I wonder what effect that has on you as a person to see things like that.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, uh...

• 55:43Speaker 02

  I would say before this war, I wasn't... I had mixed thoughts about what post-traumatic stress really was and how serious it was, but I can tell you now, there's no doubt, that's... it's definitely a thing. Um, you know, I... I would say, quite different... Of course, everything I've seen here is quite different than when I was in the US military. I used to be in the, uh, in the US Navy from 2001 till 2006, and I was on a... the USS Kitty

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Hawk that was involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom, and, uh, you know, never saw anything like that there, like I see here, of course, but, um, you know, you know, you know, I always find it's, uh, uh, interesting how the US calls, calls all of their operations, operations, but when Russia says that it's not a war, it's a special military operation. The Western media makes this big thing about it, how, "Oh, it's legal to call it a war in Russia", and all that, which is total bull. And the war's a war. Operation Iraqi Freedom was

• 57:03Speaker 02

  a war, and Russia's special military operation is a war, and then eight years before, it was a civil war. A war's a war, regardless what you want to, uh, uh, call it. And I'm in Russia now, calling it a war. Nothing's gonna happen for, because of it. Um, so that's just another false narrative that the Western media pushed of, you know, trying to say, "No freedom of speech in Russia", and all that. Just total falsehood.

• 57:34Tucker Carlson?

  So, um, did you know Gonzalo Lira, who was maybe the only other American who was looking critically at what the Ukrainian government is doing? He was murdered by the Ukrainian government, as you know. Did you ever run across him? And are you worried that if you fell into Ukrainian hands, they would murder you too?

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Well, we talked over online a couple of times.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  You know, he was definitely ballsy.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  For him to go against the Ukrainian government while he was there. And unfortunately, it didn't work so well for him.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  And of course, if I was able ever.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  If I ended up in Ukrainian forces, it would not be in Ukrainian forces' hands. It would not be a very nice time. You know, I've been on the Ukrainian kill list or whatever you want. Enemies of the state list, which I believe you are as well, Meritoritz, I believe.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  We're both on there. I've been on that list since 2016. The list that's non-governmental list that they put names of people that are an enemy of Ukraine and they write because of my work that I'm an assistance to terrorism. And they've posted photos of my children, my wife. They in the past have even posted her personal telephone number. She had to change your number because of it.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would not be a good thing if I ended up in the hands of Russian or Ukrainian forces.

• 59:30Tucker Carlson?

  The Ukrainian war effort has been led by the United States. Do you have any, which is a fact, most Americans, I think, even now don't understand. Do you have any idea how many Americans have been killed fighting for Ukraine?

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Um, well, we know it happens. I would say there's probably a lot more that have been killed for Ukraine than is public knowledge.

• 59:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  I mean, you can imagine that there is probably some internal operations on the front line that involve

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Western special forces and not all of them made it out. I've talked to.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Soldiers on the Russian soldiers on the front line about foreign mercenaries or foreign soldiers. And they said they encountered them all the time from European countries, from US and more. And it also, as I actually made a video last month about it, it seems Russia is not really playing around anymore. When it comes to foreign fighters, what they consider, all the foreign fighters, they consider foreign mercenaries. And Vladimir Putin says that these foreign mercenaries do not get the projection of the Geneva Convention.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  And are the there's a possibility of execution. So it really seems like now that there's only two outcomes for these foreigners that come over here to fight. If they come into Russian hands, it's jail or death. And I say jail because in the beginning of March, there was a British soldier who was taken prisoner by Russian forces. Who was, I believe he was taken prisoner in November of last year in the Kursk region.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  And he went through his trial and was convicted and received a 19 year sentence. So it seems Russia is going pretty strong on the foreigners here.

• 1:01:58Tucker Carlson?

  How long do you think this war will go on?

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Well, it's a very difficult question.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Back in 2022, I tried to make, as I said, the predictions like many people around the world did, and everyone was wrong. I mean, of course, the most important thing is people stop dying. And it would be great if today there was a ceasefire declared, and everyone stopped dying, and everything went back to peace and all that. But I don't think it's going to be happening anytime soon, unfortunately, because Russia has made it clear that Russian law considers

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  the four regions, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk, Lugansk, part of Russia. Western law, and of course Crimea, but even now Trump says he's gonna say Crimea is Russia. So that's not even worth discussing anymore. But Ukraine law and Western law says that these four regions are parts of Ukraine. Russia cannot stop until they control what is legally by Russian law considered part of Russia. Regardless what side of this conflict you favor, looking at Russian

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  law, Russian law cannot stop the war until they control part of all of what Russian law considers part of Russia. And I've been saying this for years. It was one thing before September of 2022, when Russia could have stopped and had a quick peace deal. But after September of 2022, these four regions were legally, as far as Russian law considers, part of Russia. And Russia cannot stop. Until it controls this and Zelenitsky, Ukraine and the West has made it clear that Ukrainian

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  forces are not just going to stand up and leave these regions. Now, if we look at Lugansk, there's 99% of the area of Lugansk that's controlled by Russia. But if you go south to the Donetsk region, it's, uh, there's less controlled by Russia with several important key places like Kramatorsk and Slaviansk, which actually hold the water supply to Donetsk. And then, of course, in Kherson, you've got the city of Kherson, Zaporozhye, the city of Zaporozhye, which are cut geographically by a river is basically the front line now.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  And I mentioned the water supply for Donetsk. Basically, after Russia took control of Mariupol in 2022, the first thing Ukraine did was cut the water from the Kramatorsk area going into Donetsk and down to Mariupol. The reason they didn't cut the water to Donetsk in the previous eight years like they did with Crimea, because that was the first thing they did with Crimea when Russia took Crimea and they cut the water supply from Ukraine, literally dammed the canal that was feeding water to the people of Ukraine, of Crimea. And the

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  water supply was going underneath Donetsk and into Mariupol, and Mariupol had to be fed by water when they controlled Mariupol. But once Russia fully took control, Ukraine shut off the water to Donetsk and Mariupol. And for a long time in Donetsk, you were only getting two hours every three days of water. I mean, just horrible living conditions because Ukraine made the decision to shut off the water to these people, the people that they said they wanted, they were trying to stop from leaving the country for eight years.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  And Russia made a huge project to bring water from the Rostov region into the Donetsk region, and it's still ongoing. And now there's a couple hours a day of water in Donetsk.

• 1:06:25Tucker Carlson?

  That's horrifying. Have you seen any reports of the Ukrainian military selling NATO arms outside of Ukraine?

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Um, you know, there, there has been some reports of Western supplied weapons showing up in the cartel hands in Mexico and other places. But what I can tell you, I have seen with my own eyes is Russian forces using these weapons back against Ukraine, weapons that Ukraine got from NATO countries and Russia captured them and turned them back against Ukraine and reverse is in the process of reverse engineering. I just did a report

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  where I went with a soldier group to a undisclosed location where they had about 20 military vehicles, NATO military vehicles that were on their way to be getting reverse engineered and basically any type of secret information they could get out of them. And that report will be coming out soon. But I would say Russia's getting a lot out of these NATO weapons.

• 1:07:53Tucker Carlson?

  Last question. Thank you, Patrick, for taking all this time. Do you think the US population, Americans, would have supported this war, which they've paid for for over three years, as long as they did, if they'd had factual, unbiased news coverage of what was actually happening there?

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  No, definitely not. And one reason is to go back to one of your previous questions about what's not being reported in the West that I could bring to light. Well, let's talk about the people of these areas, specifically the Donetsk and Lugansk areas, for the last 11 years, just wanting to break away from Ukraine and the right of self-determination. And they didn't say this in the media, that these people were not being held down by these rebels, or whatever you want to call them. These people were doing their best to leave

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  Ukraine, and Ukraine was punishing them for that. They voted to break away from Ukraine. So it's, I mean, definitely, if the Western people would really understand what's really been happening here over the last 11 years, not just the last three years, but the overall situation, there's no way they would have wanted their tax money to be supporting this and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

• 1:09:29Tucker Carlson?

  I believe that. Patrick Lancaster, thank you for doing this interview. I hope you're safe. I appreciate it. I hope you'll come back.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mr. Carlson. I appreciate you having me, and I definitely am looking forward to the next time, and hopefully one day we meet in person.

• 1:09:48Tucker Carlson?

  Godspeed. Thanks. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter, telling the truth always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.