‘Thrown to the wolves’ How a Texas man moved his family to Russia to escape ‘DEI’ — and ended up on the front lines in Ukraine

In the last three years, the Kremlin has doubled down on portraying Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” — a narrative used to justify both the invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s continued rule. One component of this campaign is “shared values” visa, introduced in 2024 for residents of “unfriendly” countries who feel alienated by liberal policies at home. By May 2025, more than 1,100 people had applied, according to the Russian Interior Ministry.

But some Americans who have taken advantage of the “shared values” program are discovering that Russia isn’t the wholesome refuge they expected. Among them are the Huffmans, a Texas family who moved to the Moscow region in early 2025 and have chronicled their experience on YouTube. Though they initially planned to become Russian citizens after completing the five-year residency required for civilians, father Derek Huffman soon decided to expedite the process by joining the military. Within two months, unconfirmed reports emerged that he’d been killed on the frontline. Meduza looks at the story of the Huffmans’ move and what we know about Derek’s fate.

On March 9, 2025, a YouTube channel called Huffman Time posted a video titled “Russia 🇷🇺, WHYY?” In it, a bald, middle-aged man named Derek Huffman explains why he and his wife, DeAnna, decided to uproot their lives in Texas and move with their three daughters to the outskirts of Moscow.

“It started a couple years ago with the LGBT indoctrination of kids,” Derek says. “These days, you can’t even turn on the TV without child cartoons talking about sex and gender.” Because his family is white, he adds, they were constantly “told we’re racist and not given the same opportunities because of the color of our skin.”

Another concern, he says, was the food in the United States: “There’s so many foods that have illegal ingredients in many other countries, but in our country — perfectly legal. Red dyes, all kinds of chemicals, fluoride in the water, and on and on.”

At first, Derek says, he and DeAnna tried to shield their daughters from the U.S. government’s “indoctrination” by homeschooling them. Then one day, he came across an article about an “American village in Russia for English-speaking Christians.”

This “American village,” located in the town of Istra, was part of an initiative led by Tim Kirby, a pro-Kremlin media figure originally from the U.S. Introducing the project at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in May 2023, Russian immigration lawyer Timur Beslangurov said that around 200 families were prepared to relocate to Russia for “ideological reasons.”

“They’ve got 70 genders now [in the West], and who knows what comes next,” Beslangurov said. “These people strongly believe in the prophecy that Russia will remain the world’s only Christian country.”

However, despite the hype from its founders, more than two years after the idea was announced, the American village reportedly has only two houses and two families.

In August 2024, just over a year after Beslangurov’s announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree introducing a special “shared values” visa for citizens of so-called “unfriendly” countries. The new visa required little more than proof of health insurance and a signed statement rejecting the applicant’s home country’s “ideological doctrines” — specifically, those said to contradict “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

This visa’s language was perfectly designed to appeal to the worldview of families like the Huffmans. “It basically came down to the moral compass of America,” Derek says in the “WHYY?” video.

The family began following the American Village project closely. They abandoned plans to build a home in Texas, sold their land, and started preparing to move to Istra.

In May 2024, Derek traveled to Russia, put down a deposit on a house, and began the visa process. Ten months later, in March 2025, the family arrived: Derek, DeAnna, and their three daughters, all between the ages of 10 and 13. The family also has three adult sons who stayed in the U.S.

Reporting by journalist Natalia Antonova suggests that the Huffmans’ relocation may not have been motivated solely by ideology. In 2019, the family filed for bankruptcy, and court records reviewed by Antonova show that Derek had “a long history of run-ins with the law,” though the charges were minor.

Their early videos from Russia are mostly lighthearted, with the parents trying to stay upbeat, though they often seem disoriented. The clips show the family learning Russian, settling into their new town, and dealing with local bureaucracy, all punctuated by reflections on what they view as America’s moral decline.

The Huffmans also made multiple appearances in Russian media in their initial months, including on the television channel NTV and the far-right Orthodox news network Tsargrad.

‘The money is a nice benefit’

On May 26, just two months after the Huffman family’s move to Istra, a new video appeared on their YouTube channel titled, “My American Husband Joined the Russian Army | Big Changes for Our Family in Russia.”

Despite the title, DeAnna builds up to the announcement, teasing “really big news.” She then goes on to explain Derek’s decision to enlist, saying:

In a cutaway, she shows two of their daughters on the couch with laptops. “Daddy just sent me a picture,” DeAnna tells the girls. “He signed the contract. It’s official.” The girls don’t look up.

“Thoughts?” DeAnna asks.

“Amazing, I miss him,” one daughter says distractedly.

Later in the video, DeAnna plays a clip that Derek recorded from his training center. Addressing “people who might think I’m crazy,” he explains that he decided to enlist largely so that the family could get citizenship sooner.

In addition to the practical advantages, Derek claims to sincerely believe in “the Russian cause.” “Ukraine has been shelling and killing and persecuting its native Russian population,” he says, repeating a disinformation narrative promoted by Moscow. “I won’t sit here and act like I’m the know-it-all on the whole situation, but I know enough to know that Russia is just in their cause.”

He also frames his military service as a way to earn his family a rightful place in Russia:

The video then cuts back to DeAnna. “We know that God is going to bring him back safely and everything is going to be okay, so we’re not really stressed or worried,” she says. “This is going to mean big things for our daughters. We are no longer going to be considered migrants.”

In a June 8 video titled “My Husband in the Russian Army,” DeAnna shares an update on Derek’s training after documenting an unsuccessful visit to a local university to look for work.

“It’s hard, of course, because it’s the military and in Russia, so it’s definitely a struggle,” she says, adding that he’s lost a lot of weight because of the quality of the food available.

She stitches in a short clip from Derek, who describes the training as physically grueling but says, “I’m okay. I’m alive, doing good, good spirits. A little nervous about what’s to come, but I signed up for this, and it’s my honor to defend our new country.”

DeAnna also talks about her difficulty finding an affordable car to use in Russia. She says a neighbor took her to several government offices, acting as her interpreter. “We were able to actually get some answers on whether or not they could help us with a vehicle,” she says. “Unfortunately, that’s not something they help with, but they do help with other things, because my husband’s in the military, so I feel like that’s going to pan out to something.”

She pushes back at commenters who suggested they ought to have plenty of money for a car with Derek’s army salary. “Migrant workers don’t actually get the money that is posted on the billboards and signs that are everywhere. They do get a bonus, but unfortunately it’s not the bonus that you think it is,” DeAnna explains. “And unfortunately we still owe money on the house, so there’s all that.”

‘We are all praying really hard’

On June 15, just a week after announcing Derek’s enlistment, DeAnna posted a video titled “My battle with Addiction, While My Husband is in the Russian Military.” In it, she reveals that she previously struggled with alcohol addiction and had been sober for years — until the stress of Derek’s deployment led her to relapse.

“I was three years this April being clean and sober from drinking alcohol. And two days ago, I went and bought a beer,” she says. “I was feeling an enormous amount of stress, and I thought, ‘Oh, I think a beer will help.’ And funny enough, it did not.”

In the same video, DeAnna reveals that the family had been counting on Derek’s professional experience as a welder to ensure he was given a “safe” position in the army. “We thought that because he had welding certificates and a really good background in construction and welding, he would be put in a spot that would be safe, or safer, and utilize his experiences. But unfortunately, we’re not sure that’s what is going to happen,” DeAnna explains.

That same day, Anton Herashchenko, Ukraine’s former deputy interior minister, posted a clip of DeAnna Huffman on X that is not on the Huffman Time YouTube channel. It’s unclear where the video came from, but it shows DeAnna talking to the camera in the same style as her YouTube videos.

In this video, DeAnna says that after another week of training, it “seems as though” Derek is going to be sent to the front lines — the very thing she says the Russian army had promised wouldn’t happen. “We are all praying really hard that he could actually be utilized for his skills and not just put as a fighter,” she tells viewers. “They told him they would be able to put him in a repair battalion because of his 10 plus years in welding [...] but it doesn’t seem like that’s happening.”

She adds that Derek’s training is being conducted in Russian, which he still doesn’t understand well. “Unfortunately, when you’re taught in a different language and you don’t understand the language, how are you really getting taught? You’re not,” she says. “So unfortunately, he feels like he’s being thrown to the wolves right now.”

Additionally, she says, Derek has yet to receive the initial payments he is owed for his army service.

“He’s been gone for a month and he hasn’t received anything — not a bonus, nothing,” she says. “Apparently, he’s paying for supplies, or helping to pay for supplies. I was unsure because I was never told one way or the other about supplies.”

If DeAnna’s claims are true, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the Russian military. False promises of non-combat roles or “safe” deployments have been a mainstay of Moscow’s recruitment of foreigners into its military during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, Russian soldiers have reported having to buy their own equipment, including basic necessities, since the start of the war. 

Around July 23, numerous X users claimed, without providing evidence, that Derek Huffman had been killed in action. The following day, the Maltese Herald, a news site that was created less than a year earlier, reported that Derek had been “confirmed killed on the Ukrainian front lines by a drone strike. The article said that footage of his death was “being circulated online” but did not say where or provide a link.

After the Maltese Herald report, DeAnna wrote a statement in the comments under one of the family’s videos denying that Derek had been killed. Three days later, she uploaded an 18-minute video featuring audio of a phone conversation between her in Derek in which the two discuss the reports of his death and laugh about them. Meduza has not independently confirmed that Derek is alive, but as of this writing, there appears to be no publicly available evidence of his death.

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