Remember the Feenstra family? They’re the Canadian couple who sold their farm, packed up their worldly belongings and eight of their nine children, and in February of this year moved to Russia because of their fear that LGBTQ rights and other liberal tendencies in their country might negatively impact their kids. I haven’t seen any information about the ninth offspring, or why that one was left behind; but I’m assuming he or she is an adult and opted to stay at home. That would be the smart Feenstra.

*. *. *

And now we have one Wilmer Puello-Mota, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former elected official from Holyoke, Massachusetts, who has reportedly also fled to Russia . . . in his case, to escape prosecution, an 18-month prison sentence, and registration as a sex offender in his home state. Given his options, he apparently decided life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia would be the better choice.

So how’s that working out for you, Wilmer?

Puello-Mota had been charged with possession of sexually explicit images of a minor (17-year-old female), and was scheduled to appear in court in Rhode Island in January, where he was expected to enter a negotiated guilty plea. However, according to his attorney, he failed to show up and instead boarded a flight from Washington, D.C. to Istanbul, Turkey, and somehow traveled from there into Russia. He allegedly told his attorney that he was joining the Russian army to fight in Ukraine. [Steve LeBlanc and Nick Perry, Associated Press, April 10, 2024.]

This is a young man who served with the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan in 2015, and later with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing as a security forces airman. But in 2020, when he called to report a stolen gun, police, during the course of their investigation, discovered the pornographic material featuring the minor on his cell phone. He was also subsequently charged with “trying to deceive prosecutors and his commanders about the case,” as well as obstruction of justice and of forgery and counterfeiting for forging his military supervisor’s signature on a fraudulent memo to Rhode Island prosecutors. And so forth. [James Pentland, Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 11, 2024.]

The details of this adventure are convoluted and fuzzy, at best. Videos and pictures submitted to substantiate his claims of being in Russia and enlisting in the Russian army appear to show him in those places, but are not currently verifiable. The question remains whether he truly has fled the U.S. and chosen life under a totalitarian regime in preference to a plea-bargained 18 months in a U.S. prison, or gone to a great deal of trouble to fake it. As stated by Rhode Island prosecutors:

“While the state cannot verify the authenticity of the videos and photographs, if they are accurate the defendant is well beyond the jurisdiction of this court and, if false, the defendant is engaged in an elaborate ruse to conceal his whereabouts.” [Id.]

Either way, this loser has totally screwed up his life, and — as far as I’m concerned — the Russians can have him. They deserve each other.

*. *. *

As for the Feenstras, I’m unable to find any updates on how the clan is getting along in their new home after a somewhat rocky start, and I have to wonder whether their social media accounts have been shut down. That couple — two seemingly normal farmers from Canada — will both literally and figuratively reap what they have sown. But I worry about the eight children who had no choice in the matter.

*. *. *

Of course, the Kremlin loves the propaganda value to be gained from occasions such as these. What they conveniently fail to mention are the roughly one million — that’s 1,000,000 — Russian citizens who have fled the country since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 . . . most to avoid military conscription, but also a few hundred thousand tech specialists, journalists, teachers, and other Russian professionals and members of the intelligentsia who have found themselves to be at grave risk under the Putin regime.

The scales don’t quite balance, do they?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/13/24