Ezra LeVant sends Jeremy LaFredo to Moscow for $11,000 to expose Western sanctions’ impact—affordable groceries (milk at 89 rubles) and gas ($2.75/gallon) contradict economic collapse claims, while rural price spikes reveal cracks. With a fixer and cameraman, he navigates risks of arrest or propaganda accusations, aiming for unfiltered voices amid Putin’s nuclear threats and Zelensky’s rhetoric. Crowdfunded via RussianReports.com, the mission counters demonization by both sides, highlighting how state-aligned media like CNN or CBC’s $1.3M BIPOC Coalition payouts (including $60K sabbaticals to Dubai) skew narratives, proving independent journalism’s necessity in war-torn disinformation. [Automatically generated summary]
As you may know, we have sent a reporter to Moscow, Russia, which is dangerous from a number of points of view.
And I really had a heart-to-heart with our reporter, Jeremy Lafredo, before we sent him over on the risks he faced, including the potential risk of being arrested.
And before we sent him over, we brought him up here to our headquarters to talk to him about how to do this story, how to be careful not to get in trouble physically through arrest, but also to get in trouble politically.
We don't want anyone on either side of this war to say that we are in league with one country or the other.
We don't want anyone to think that we're propagandists or shills.
So I want you to listen to the half-hour conversation I had with Jeremy Lafredo before we sent him over, because it's where Jeremy and I outline our philosophical principles for how we're going to cover our trip to Moscow.
But before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, but you get so much content you just won't get anywhere else.
This Russian Reports is a perfect example of that.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a heart-to-heart conversation with our reporter filmed before we sent him to Russia.
It's December 8th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hey, did you see the news?
I sent it out by email.
We did something a little bit dangerous, dangerous physically and also dangerous politically.
We sent a reporter to Moscow, Russia.
Here's his scene setter report that he filmed right when he landed.
I'm Jeremy Lafredo for Rebel News, and I just touched down in Moscow, Russia.
I'm going to be here all week to try to bring you the truth on the most important geopolitical issue of our time.
I'm going to speak to Russians, Ukrainians, soldiers, professors, and I'm going to try to get you guys the truth.
Now, between visas, translators, and transportation, this trip was not cheap.
Inside Russian Grocery Stores00:15:30
And these finances have acted like a financial censorship mechanism that have stopped independent media from coming here and reporting the truth.
So you can support my work in Moscow and Rebel News at RussianReports.com.
That's RussianReports.com.
For Rebel News, I'm Jeremy LaFredo.
Well, today we released the first substantive report.
I had some questions for him, and he had the same questions.
What's it like being an ordinary Russian?
Have the sanctions made life miserable?
Can they still get affordable groceries?
What's the ruble doing?
Are they all poor?
I didn't know any of these things.
What's the price of gas?
So one of the first things Jeremy LaFredo, our reporter, did, well, he went to buy some food at a grocery store and fill up with gas.
Take a look at this video.
We just released it today.
I'm Jeremy Lafredo for Rebel News in Moscow, Russia.
We've been told that the Western sanctions against Russia are bringing the economy to its knees.
Well, one marker of that is the price of food.
Essential goods like cheese, milk, bread, and meat are all markers of how well the economy is doing.
Well, I'm going to go to a grocery store in Moscow and see if the shelves are bare and see if things are expensive or not.
Leveled against Russia by the U.S. and its allies are the harshest ever handed down.
The Russians are dealing with some hefty international sanctions levied against the country.
And their effects are being widely felt in Russia.
After touching down in Moscow, the first thing I decided to do was get some food, but I wondered if that would be easy.
The New York Times reported that the Western sanctions against Russia are leading to essential goods scarcity.
And the Washington Post went as far as saying that Russia is facing quote Soviet-era shortages.
So I went to a grocery store here in Russia to get the whole story and some food and to experience firsthand the reported scarcity and Soviet-style shortages.
The grocery store I went to in Moscow was located inside of a shopping center.
And to my surprise, the shopping center was filled with both regular consumer and luxury stores, all stocked.
But this doesn't mean that the grocery store has food.
These are separate types of goods from different places, and different sanctions affect different things.
Upon walking in, I was surprised.
It seemed like not only a normal grocery store, but it was absolutely full of food.
Barilla pasta, which you can get at any grocery store in the States, was stacked so tall that I would need a ladder to reach the linguini.
But I remained skeptical because surely the New York Times and the Washington Post wouldn't be lying.
And of course, the seemingly full store could be a façade.
There could only be one item in front of the shelf and nothing behind it.
A classic move.
Another question was: how expensive is everything?
Russian stores could have food, but with inflation and shortages, items could be so expensive that no one can afford it.
First, I went to the milk aisle.
Kiefer, 1%, 2%, 3%, and even 4% milk, yogurts, and fake dairy alternatives, they had a lot of options.
I got a liter of regular milk.
It was 89 rubles or $1.41.
Then I went for some bread.
Nothing fancy, just a loaf of whole wheat.
It was 60 rubles or 95 cents.
They also had an entire bakery making fresh baked goods.
Then I made my way to the meat section.
They had beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and even rabbit.
I settled for a pound of ground beef, which was 175 rubles, or $2.78.
I then decided to get some eggs.
Strangely enough, the eggs were not kept refrigerated, but they did have dozens of choices.
I got 10 eggs for 99 rubles or $1.47.
Then I decided to get some vegetables for my meat, a container of mushrooms for 79 rubles or $1.25.
And then I went to pay for everything, in rubles, of course.
The total for milk, eggs, beef, bread, and mushrooms was 499 rubles or $7.92.
Surprisingly, it seems the mainstream media is not being entirely truthful in regards to the effects sanctions are having on the prices of essential goods in Russia.
Despite my experience, a few people I spoke to explained that the sanctions have had an effect on them in one way or another.
This lady, from a rural market outside of Moscow, is selling produce.
She explained that while most prices have stayed the same, the prices of some foods have actually skyrocketed.
And this man, who sells cranberries at the market, spoke to me about the prices of berries.
I didn't notice the difference.
Everything was so good, so it stayed at the same place.
This young woman told me that the idea that Russian people are suffering from sanctions is simply not true.
But the uncertainty of everything has made people more serious about financial planning and financial literacy.
Another essential good pretty much all people use is gasoline.
The prices of gasoline in the US have skyrocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. refuses to buy oil from what they call a belligerent regime.
But these policies actually fell hardest on the American people, since they're the ones paying more at the pump.
So I went to a gas station in Russia.
Gas was about 47 rubles per liter.
Converted to US metrics, that's about $2.75 per gallon.
I spoke to a man from Moscow, who drives for a living.
For Rebel News in Moscow, Russia, I'm Jeremy Lefredo.
Now, what do you think of that video?
Would you say that's a pro-Putin video?
I don't think it's pro-Putin or anti-Putin.
I think it's just a video asking the question, what's it like in Russia?
Are the sanctions having a bite?
Are ordinary people feeling the pain?
I don't know.
I thought it was a pretty good test.
What's a grocery store like?
It looked pretty full to me.
And by the way, the prices paid for milk and eggs and other things in Russia, many of them are cheaper than here in Canada.
For that, you can blame many things, including that we have marketing boards, so you have expensive eggs and dairy and chicken in Canada no matter what.
I think they're actually, I mean, that looked like an amazing grocery store.
One of the amazing things about it was it was cheaper there than it is over here.
And the ruble, the Russian currency, is actually stronger now than at the beginning of the war.
So is it propaganda to show that, or is that just actual just the facts reporting?
I think it's just the facts reporting.
Aren't you glad you know that?
And doesn't that confuse you a little bit based on what we were told about the sanctions pushing Vladimir Putin to the tipping point?
I don't know.
I find it confusing.
But this is a dangerous mission, not just because there's the risk that our reporter could be arrested, but also that people could say, well, you are just agents for NATO, or you are just agents for Putin, or you're just a propagandist for one side or the other.
That's why before we sent Jeremy Lofredo over to Russia, we had a heart-to-heart with him in our boardroom here at our world headquarters in Toronto.
He's based in New York.
He came up, and it was actually the first time I had met him in person.
As you know, we hired a number of people around the world during the lockdowns that we just weren't allowed to travel and weren't allowed to travel here.
So Jeremy and I talked, and I'm going to play for you about a half an hour of that video because I want you to see my thinking and his thinking about how to do this trip to Russia right.
All right, stick around.
I'll come back after the video.
Take a look.
Jeremy, when you told me you wanted to go to Russia, I thought that's dangerous.
That's a risky idea.
But I thought about it and I thought maybe that's a great idea.
If our motto at Rebel News is telling the other side of the story, I don't think we've heard the real story from Russia.
I don't think we've certainly heard from the Russian people.
Do they support the war?
Do they support Putin?
How are they doing economically?
Have they heard the Ukrainian case?
What's their answer to it?
I'm worried about the risks of going to Russia, but I think it could actually be amazing journalism.
Yeah, I think that with the most prominent geopolitical strategists in the world all explaining that this could end up in nuclear catastrophe, but there's no independent media on the ground.
I think that's a giant problem and something that rebel news can fix.
You know, it's hard to find out what's really going on.
I'm very interested in the truth about this war.
I believe that there's disinformation on both sides.
That's always been a weapon in war, a weapon of war, on both sides, though.
And so I think that to find out what's going on on the ground in Ukraine is probably too dangerous for us to do.
You're not a war correspondent.
I don't think we have the resources or the know-how to get you onto the battlefield.
I don't think that's what we would do.
But to send you to Moscow, which is an information battlefield, I think we can do that if we're careful.
about how we conduct ourselves, if we're careful that we don't get you arrested, and if we're careful not to fall into traps of reporting on a war in an authoritarian regime.
I think even Russia's supporters would acknowledge that it's authoritarian.
They have extra legal arrests and imprisonments.
We have to be careful that we don't get you arrested, but we also have to be independent enough that we're not just echoing Russian propaganda.
It's a very delicate project, but I think we can do it.
I think it's delicate, but I think at the same time, if people see that what we're doing is we're putting microphones to the Russian people and we're not editorializing, it's important to know what they believe.
Whether they support the war, whether they're against the war, what they think of the U.S., what they think of NATO, whether they are scared that they're going to get drafted, whatever they might think, it's important to know what that is and show a Western audience because the Russian side, whether it's coming from Russian media or whether it's coming from prominent U.S. journalists, it's been demonized and censored and banned on social media.
So we're in a dangerous situation in terms of a political landscape and media landscape.
You know, it's hard to go over there.
And I think it's, you know, again, that's a weapon of war is making it hard to interact with the enemy.
There are no direct flights that I know of between Canada and the United States or Russia.
I think there were in the past.
But as far as I can tell, there are none.
You have to go through a third country.
It's hard to pay for things over there.
We wanted to hire a Russian criminal lawyer in case, God forbid you got arrested.
We wanted to find one, get him briefed now, get him ready now.
In case, God forbid you're arrested.
We have someone on the ground already.
Even paying that lawyer, you can't send money from a Canadian or American bank to a Russian bank.
So there's a lot of ways it's difficult to get there.
And even in the West here, they make it difficult for us to hear the Russian side of the story.
For example, YouTube has deleted Russia Today's channel.
And I'm not saying that I would follow Russia today uncritically.
I knew it was government messaging.
But I would like to know what the government messaging is.
So I know what they're thinking about.
I know what I might need to rebut or research.
I think it is hard to know what's going on.
And being on the ground may be the one way you can find out certain facts with your own eyes.
Like, I'm curious, what's the mood in Russia?
Are young men worried about being conscripted?
Is the economy devastated, which you might expect from sanctions, or is it doing well because of oil?
Are people afraid to criticize Putin or do they do so and they don't care?
I think those things you can only know by being there.
Yeah, I mean, the mainstream media, they do lie all the time.
Could they be telling the truth right now?
Yes, it's possible.
So let's go there and let's see, you know, what the feeling's like in one of the biggest Russian cities.
One of the tools we do a lot of rebel news, and I know you do it as well, is what we call streeters or man on the street or box pop.
And that's, it's not a sophisticated form of journalism.
It's just, let's just talk to normal people, or at least people we find on the street who are willing to talk to us.
And, you know, there's sometimes a goofy question you can ask or just a quick reaction.
The trouble with doing streeters in an authoritarian regime is that people might be afraid to speak on camera because they might fear retaliation of some sort.
So I think if you were to send a cameraman to Russia 40 years ago when it was under the Soviet Union, the only people willing to talk to you on camera would probably be Communist Party members who were praising the dictator.
So I don't know if that's a function today.
If people are so afraid of Vladimir Putin that they would not criticize him on camera, maybe some people would have to be interviewed with the camera not pointing at their face, just pointing at their shoes, maybe.
Or maybe we would have to obscure them.
But we have to think: how do we do journalism in Moscow that is so legitimate and objective and just basic?
Nothing too tricky or fancy, just who, what, where, why, when, basic meat and potatoes journalism that it can withstand scrutiny of anyone, whether they're a pro-Russian shill or a pro-Ukraine shill or someone from NATO or so,
like I want our journalism to be so speak for itself honest and so ethical that no matter where what side people are on in this war, they'll say that was real journalism and I learned something and I can trust that it was not disinformation.
That's going to be very tough to do.
I think that when we see disinformation right now, it's been through three different organizations.
Many people have touched it, many different conflicts of interest.
And one of the pluses of being on the street is people can say whatever they want.
It's the Russian people who are speaking.
So whether you think that they're lying or whether you disagree with them, it's a fact that this person said this thing.
So I think it'll be hard to criticize as being pro-Russia or anti-Russia when we're just letting people speak.
And I'm not going to editorialize.
There's something to be said for citizen journalism.
And every person in the world can be a journalist today.
Citizen Journalism Matters00:03:43
Do you have a smartphone with a camera?
Surprise, you're a journalist.
I mean, that really is probably more, if you turn your cell phone on on the streets of Moscow and ask people how they feel about the war, that is more journalistic integrity and more honest and interesting journalism than half of the homogenized, pasteurized, processed journalism going through the big companies that I don't think are allowed to deviate from the official line.
And I think everyone is against war, and I think everyone wants this resolved peacefully.
No one more than the Ukrainian people whose country has become this battleground, I think this giant proxy war between the East and the West.
We don't have the ability to go to Ukraine, so can we go into the heart of the antagonist and see if Putin is supported?
What do his people say?
We just don't know that because I can't think of a single mainstream media journalist in Canada, the United States, or the United Kingdom who has actually talked to Russians on the ground.
A lot are going to Ukraine, but they feel very stage-managed.
Do you know of any journalists who have gone to Russia and asked real questions in an unscripted way?
No, I don't.
And you said Russia today was taken off the internet.
And it's obviously we know that Russia Today is propaganda, but it's a different scenario and a different political climate when we have professional U.S. journalists who are simply questioning the government narrative regarding this war.
And they're being criticized and being asked to be investigated by U.S. politicians, U.S. intelligence agencies.
So, yes, obviously we don't want Russia today, but the fact that regular independent journalists are being demonized for just asking questions is really disheartening.
And I think some of that can be fixed by simply going there and explaining exactly what's the feeling in the air of Moscow.
You know, that's one of the tools for stifling any criticism of American policy, of criticism of Canadian policy, is to call a critic a disinformation spreader.
And in Canada recently, there was a professor at the University of Calgary who did a study.
It was not peer-reviewed, obviously.
And one of his tests for being a Russian agent, I'm not even kidding, was if you sowed distrust in Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government.
And he literally said the name Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government.
That's the name of the party.
So any dissent, any criticism at all, any opposition, any public interest skepticism of our government would automatically be put in the category of foreign disinformation.
They actually accused Rebel News of that, which is insane.
There's no way that you can stop malicious, bad faith critics from saying that.
But it is my desire that you go to Russia and your journalism is so even-handed, so objective, and so just follow the facts wherever they lead.
Let people say what they want to say.
If they want you to shield their face while they say it, give them that anonymity.
It is my goal that you go to Russia and come back with journalism that any fair-minded person can say, that was real journalism from Russia.
You're never going to please these professional disinformation accusers.
They get paid to make accusations, and they will certainly do this because they don't want reporters going to Russia.
I do not know what the answers will be to your questions.
Ukrainian Arguments Unveiled00:07:02
I don't know if there is a problem.
That's the beauty of it.
For example, I hear that 100,000 Russians, there's 100,000 casualties in Ukraine.
That's a staggering number if it's true.
The entire Vietnam War, for its entire duration, cost 55,000 lives in America, which is a huge number.
To double that number in such a short period of time would be an enormous blow.
I would have to think that that would touch almost every Russian family.
Is that true?
Have people lost friends or loved ones?
Are young men worried about being conscripted?
I think that I don't know if we'll ever know the actual casualty count, but I think one way of measuring this war is are mums grieving.
Yeah, anecdotal evidence.
Let's go there and collect some.
There's other things.
I mean, the economy.
We were told that the sanctions would break Russia, and I think they've made interaction between Russia and the West harder.
One thing I think you can only see by being there is what's business like?
Is it prosperous?
The ruble has not been shattered because of the sales of oil and gas.
How are people getting along?
Are they using Chinese banks?
Are there Chinese businesses taking over the American ones that moved out?
A lot of American retail companies.
I think McDonald's even left.
McDonald's was one of the first Russian companies in Russia that tried to liberalize trade.
If it's being pulled out now because of sanctions, who took over those McDonald's restaurants?
Did some Russian change?
Did a Chinese company?
As the West freezes out Russia, has Iran moved in?
I don't know.
I would like to know, what is a Starbucks like there?
What's a McDonald's like?
I think those are small little colorful vignettes that being on the street could show you.
That's not interviewing the defense minister or the foreign minister, but that's a little observation that may give us a window into larger issues.
I mean, we're told that, you know, Western capital has completely pulled out of Russia and they're really hurting.
We're told, you know, the death count is X.
And, you know, it is the mainstream media.
We don't know what to believe.
So that's why it's so important to go there and walk around and really see, is there a McDonald's there?
Is there a TD bank there?
We already know that, you know, our banks, my card won't work there.
There are sanctions on Western banks.
We know that my plane has to go around Ukraine.
It's going to take an extra three hours to get to Russia.
So we already know that there's policies in place that stop Western companies from behaving like they normally do.
So has that taken a toll on the Russian people?
We'll find out.
I think we know the Ukrainian argument.
Ukrainian argument is that this was uncalled for, violent aggression by a foreign country violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine against the Budapest memorandum, against treaties, against international norms.
What's one of the Ukrainian arguments?
That this is Russian imperialism.
This is Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB agent who wants to seek a greater Russia, a grandiose scheme.
Those are some of the Ukrainian arguments.
And I don't think I'm caricaturing them.
I think that's some of the language that you see on the Ukrainian side and on the NATO side.
That all Ukraine wants is to be free and independent and it needs to defend itself.
Those are some of the Ukrainian arguments.
And I think there's more.
I want to see if Russians have heard these arguments.
I want to see how they would react to these arguments.
Are they persuaded by them?
Have they ever heard them before?
In Russia, do they get news from the other side?
And do they have any sympathy for the Ukrainian side?
Do they think that the war was excessive?
So I want to, if possible, I want to put to Russian people the Ukrainian case just to see the reaction.
Of course.
I think that would be very interesting.
Maybe they've never even heard the Ukrainian case.
I know that many Russians, well, I'm told, that many Russians see, you know, most Ukrainians who speak Russian as Russian.
So like, what does that border mean to Russians?
I want to know.
And have they heard these arguments that we hear often in the West?
And what are their feelings about them?
You know, there's a lot of complicated things.
I don't prepare to be an expert in Ukraine.
I know there's parts of Ukraine that are ethnically Russian and that feel an affiliation for Russia.
Again, you and I are sitting here in North America and we're discussing something where neither of us have been.
And it's hard for us to know.
We can study the world through the media and through the internet, but there's a blockage here, I think, on purpose.
And I think it's our mission to find out.
Now, one of the things is, and this is one of the very first things I said to you, is it's physically dangerous.
Our reporters have been arrested probably a dozen times.
But we've been arrested in places where there was the rule of law, and we just had to get a lawyer, and our reporter would be out within hours, and we could probably get the charge dismissed because it was overheated police in the moment.
I'm never truly afraid for our journalists.
We've sent journalists to partly free countries like Iraq and Morocco before, but we had some sort of safety for them.
That's not the case here.
There's a prominent American WNBA player who's in prison, hard labor in Russia right now.
And all the diplomatic and political efforts to free her have been to no avail.
Legally, she hasn't been rescued.
Russia is a different ballgame.
If the Russian government thinks that you are if, if they think you're undermining that country, if they think you're engaging in some sort of sedition, you are beyond the help of us.
I mean, if Joe Biden can't free that American prisoner, there's no way that little Rebel NEWS can free you.
And and I don't think the Canadian government would be much help, frankly.
So I i've tried to emphasize to you the personal risk, and I know you don't have a wife and kids.
That makes me feel slightly better.
And I know you're.
Not going to provoke, but you never know what some local cop takes as a provocation, especially in in the state of a war.
They might say, who is this American who is here doing journalism to stir up trouble against the leader and against the army?
This is unpatriotic, this is treason.
Throw him in jail and there'll be a hearing in a month, like if that happens, we are pretty much powerless to rescue you.
I'm just telling you, yeah um i'm, i'm hoping that you know i'm going to be, as you know um, neutral as possible and just let Ukrainians speak.
People Seeking Comfortable, Safe Spaces00:15:01
And if Ukrainians feel comfortable speaking, then I think I should feel comfortable Ukrainians.
I think you mean Russians, but we'll talk to whoever we see there and who knows, it'll be interesting to see what other people are there.
I mean, Ukraine and Russia have a lot of uh back and forth.
I wonder if there's still.
I wonder what it's like to be a Ukrainian in Moscow.
I wonder what, what other?
I mean?
Moscow is a fairly metropolitan.
It's an enormous city.
There's a lot of expats.
That is the place to be.
If you're a foreigner in Russia.
It'll be interesting to see if you see any Ukrainians.
Yeah, of course i'd love to talk to them, but but I know you meant Russians there.
No the, what I was saying was um, if Russians feel comfortable speaking to me, then I, I feel that I should feel comfortable listening to them, and if they, you know, didn't feel comfortable speaking to me, then maybe I shouldn't be around asking questions.
Um, but based on the people that we know in Russia that i've made contact with before I went there, it seems like um, you know I, I should be allowed to ask questions.
You know if um, if you go there and come back safely, all of this will have a good chuckle about it.
But there is a chance I don't know if it's one percent or ten percent or twenty percent that you will have trouble.
And I just want our viewers to know and you were part of this we hired a lawyer, a criminal lawyer in Moscow and explained to him our mission and he is on standby to help in case, god forbid, you get into trouble.
We're following Russian rules in terms of getting a visa and applying at the consulate and you've you've received that visa.
In fact, just yesterday you were at the Russian consulate in New York and you are approved for this trip.
Yeah, I got my visa and we're following the rules as much as we can.
We're not.
We're not going to, we're not going as activists, we're going as journalists.
So I I want viewers to know that we've been very as as diligent as we can be and we've even taken that precaution of hiring a local lawyer in case We need one in the middle of the night.
We don't have to start our search from scratch.
We've got a Russian lawyer in the city who has met you over Zoom and is ready to go.
And I just want our viewers to know that because we're not being cavalier.
I think it's a risk that you understand.
I wrote you a letter before you came to visit me listing every possible danger I could think of, every possible thing that could go wrong.
And I told you to talk to family and friends and even to consult outside legal counsel.
And I just want to hear you say it, that you're comfortable in incurring this risk.
I'm definitely comfortable incurring this risk.
I think that what will come of it will be really valuable journalism for everybody to see.
I think so too.
And it's strange that a tiny little company like ours, we're tiny compared to any other major Western media.
And I think the reason we can do this is precisely because we're small.
We're not owned by some conglomerate that is worried about getting offside with some other conglomerate.
We're sort of impervious to that because we're 100% grassroots sponsored.
We're demonetized on YouTube.
Like we're only one step away from being given the RT treatment and nuked altogether.
I think it's because we're grassroots sponsored that we can do this.
If there was some big bank behind us or big, you know, CBS or Disney, there would be no way we could do something so contrary to the official narrative.
I mean, many of these corporations that own our media have entered the war essentially.
They've said, you know, we're pulling out of Russia.
They've backed the government policy on whatever the government says.
So there's only independent media left to go there and tell the truth about what's going on, whatever that is.
You know, and it's hard to do that because you're going to be demonized by the other guys.
Some other journalists will be jealous that you're allowed to go and do real journalism and they're not.
Some others will be in some way on getting a government contract or a bailout.
In Canada, most of the media takes government money.
I want to talk a little bit about how it's going to happen.
So you're flying from New York City through Turkey, I understand.
Istanbul.
Istanbul.
To Moscow.
That's a fairly long journey.
And do you know what the price of that ticket was?
It was about $3,000, if I was.
Wasn't cheap.
It wasn't cheap.
And then we have a hotel for you in Moscow.
And then there's the legal help.
And then on the ground, you don't speak Russian, do you?
I don't speak Russian.
So we have two people who will accompany you.
One of them has worked as a journalist there for a foreign broadcaster before.
So she's completely fluent in Russian.
Yes.
Will help interpret.
If you encounter people who don't speak good English, she'll be accompanying you, driving you.
She has a vehicle, so she'll be driving around the city, which is good because it's an enormous city.
And we also have a cameraman who will be helping.
And we're not going with very big, conspicuous cameras.
We're going to keep it pretty modest because we just don't need to attract extra attention.
So in addition to your journey from New York through Istanbul to Moscow, we've got two people that we are hiring.
And we've talked to them both over Zoom, and we've gotten to know them as well as you could get to know someone over Zoom.
I mean, we have to take them at their face value.
But the fixer interpreter, I feel very confident with her because she really, in fact, she was telling us about Vox Pop interviews she did just the other day.
She's very, very familiar with the news culture and how to produce a segment.
Yeah, I feel good about that, but those are costs too.
Yeah, of course.
Between the fixer interpreter producer, I'm going to call her, and the cameraman, I think we're looking at about, well, I mean, I don't want to disclose their per diem online, but between the two of them, it's about $4,500 plus the $3,000 for your flight, plus hotel, plus food, plus, we're giving you a little bit of spending money.
I think the cost of this trip all in, if we don't have to engage the lawyer, and I hope that is going to be about $11,000.
And that sounds crazy just for a one-week trip to Moscow, but it's because we have all those parts there because we just need a lawyer and we need an interpreter and we need someone who drives you around.
It's the bare minimum to make everything work perfectly and as it should.
I think it's going to be very interesting.
And I mentioned that the reason we're able to do this is because we're independent.
I really think that if we were a big, wealthy company for whom flying you to Moscow was no problem, well, actually, we couldn't do it then because we would have pain points on our organization that someone would say, you're not really, you're not really going to Russia.
You can't tell that side of the story.
That's only like, I think it's precisely because we are crowdfunded.
I mean, you're fairly new to our company, but you know that we're not owned by a corporate.
I'm the owner of Rebel News.
I'm not independently wealthy, but we crowdfund all our projects.
And so I want to ask our viewers if they would crowdfund this.
I think we've outlined pretty clearly what we're doing, how we're doing it, the steps we're taking to keep you safe, and God willing, we'll never need that criminal lawyer.
It's around $11,000.
And the way I hope to pay for that is through a dedicated website we're setting up called RussianReports.com.
And what we're going to put there is we're going to put all your videos from Russia so people can go to that one spot and find them all.
And if they feel compelled to chip in, whether it's $100 or $50 or even more, they can just do that right there on the website and they can donate in different currencies.
So that's how we do.
That's our business model.
You know, we were demonetized by YouTube, so we don't make money from them.
We don't receive government money, obviously, although most Canadian-based media do.
So where does it come from?
Well, it comes from our grassroots viewers, which is a pain in the neck because we don't have all that free money from YouTube.
But that actually set us free.
You know, if we were getting ad money from YouTube, maybe we couldn't do this trip.
Maybe they would hold it over us and say, well, if you do this trip.
Ad money gone.
Yeah, I mean, listen, they already nuked us for something we said about Donald Trump a couple years ago.
So they've already pulled the trigger on that.
They have nothing more to hold over us.
I'm just looking at my notes here.
I feel like we covered the bases.
We know why this is important.
This is a huge war between two superpowers, and Ukraine is the place where the battle is happening.
I don't believe we're getting the whole story because there's lies on both sides, and I want to find the facts.
You suggested this trip, which shocked me at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought if we can mitigate the dangers, we'll be okay.
The number one danger is your safety.
And I think we're doing everything we can.
And I know you're not going to go looking for trouble.
No, I'm not.
I think the only thing I'm actually worried about is bad faith critics in the West saying you shouldn't even go over there.
You shouldn't even try and find out what Russian people are thinking.
You are a shill for Vladimir Putin because you're even suggesting you'll talk to the other side.
I reject that as a bad faith criticism.
I believe we can do excellent journalism in Moscow.
And we would go to Kiev if I thought we would be safe.
Yeah, of course.
Frankly, I know that they have arrested or shut down independent media in Ukraine.
I would be more afraid to send you there, given some of the crackdowns on the media in Ukraine.
I'm nervous enough sending you to Moscow, but I believe that you and I have spoken, we've probably spoken about this half a dozen times now.
And I know you're committed to following the facts wherever they lead and just showing the facts and showing the news.
Whether that puts Ukraine or Russia in a bad light or a good light, we're going to show the facts.
RussianReports.com.
I really think that that website, once the reports start going up, will really be one of the most valuable places on the internet to figure out what's actually happening inside of Russia.
I think so.
You know, we talked to our fixer, our journalist who's been working there for 10 years, and she says that she thinks she can connect you to what are sometimes called civil society organizations.
Not government agencies, but, you know, a think tank or an independent professor.
Because it's great to get grassroots vox pop just from an ordinary person on the street.
And that's very useful for taking the temperature of the country, taking the pulse of the country.
Is Putin popular?
Are people starting to feel like Vietnam and they're just they want the war over?
Or Afghanistan might be the better example for Russia.
But if there are institutional critics of Putin, first of all, that would be amazing to learn.
Because I don't know if there are any critics of Putin who are still allowed to offer them.
Yeah, I don't know.
So we have this preconception of what your trip will be like, doing lots of streeters, as we call it.
But again, follow where things lead.
And you have two Russians with you, one of whom has been doing journalism for a decade.
If she can introduce you to an activist, to an independent commentator or think tank, meet with them.
Now, maybe that's where you might get in trouble with the authorities, but I think you have to meet with them, especially if they are a critic of the government.
And we're doing that just because we want to show the other side of the story.
That said, if you can find someone on the government side who's willing to give you an official hearing, take that meeting too, and put to them the most challenging cases.
And you can do it, I think, and I know you're sophisticated enough.
You can do it in a way that's not attack.
You can say, your critics say, the president of Ukraine says, what do you say to that?
So it's not even that you're, you're just putting to him the arguments that we hear in America all the time.
What do you say to Vladimir Zelensky's point about this?
What do you say?
Like, put it to him if you get an audience with some official of some sort.
I don't know if that's going to happen in the week you're going there.
We're not trying to get official propaganda.
We have enough of that.
We want to get real Russia.
I'm excited about this.
You've got your passport.
You've got your visa.
You've got your lawyer.
You got your hotel.
You got your fixer and interpreter and cameraman.
We got the website, RussianReports.com.
I think we're ready to go.
Ready to go?
All right.
Well, listen, I want to thank you for this mission.
I'm excited.
I hope that handshake is not our last.
I hope that I'll see you in a week or so when you're back.
And I think it's going to be an amazing trip.
There are a few more things we didn't talk about for security reasons, like how you're going to have the footage and how you're going to get it back to us.
I think it's important that we get that footage exfiltrated from the country as soon as possible in case your stuff is seized.
And again, I'm not saying it will be.
I'm just saying we have to plan for those scenarios.
I think this is great journalism in our tradition.
You know our motto.
Telling the other side of the story.
Telling the other side of the story.
I think this is exactly.
We're exactly doing that to the fullest extent.
You know, we're risking, you know, some nuclear war right now.
Yeah.
So let's tell the other side of the story and go there and see what the people think.
Yeah, it's incredible to me the kind of talk from both Putin and talking about nuclear weapons.
And you would think that would be the front page news every day.
Whether you're for Russia or Ukraine at all, you know, war between America and Russia would be a mutually assured destruction.
Like that's what's kept us safe.
That mutual threat has kept us safe for 70 years.
And now both sides seem to be treating it as cavalier.
I do not.
Well, Jeremy Lafredo, great to have you here, and I wish you a safe journey.
And I look forward to your speedy return with excellent journalism.
And folks, you can see all of the reports from Jeremy's trip to Moscow on RussianReports.com.
And if you feel like this project is worth your support, please chip in whether it's $10 or $50, because you're not going to find this on CNN.
I promise you that.
You're not going to find it on Canada's CBC state broadcaster.
This is a perfect project for a citizen journalist like Jeremy.
What do you think of that?
Do you think that's fair?
I mean, I suppose the safe thing to do is just not go there.
The safe thing from Jeremy's point of view, we don't want him to be arrested, although we have a lawyer in Moscow on standby for him.
The safe thing is not to get too embroiled with that.
As you know, we're already fighting Trudeau's disinformation czar because he claims we're Putin shills.
Maybe going to Moscow and asking Russians what they think is somehow passed off as being pro-Russian.
The Safe Thing Is Not00:04:39
I don't think so.
I think asking Russians if they like Putin is actually an act of defiance.
We just have to make sure that people aren't answering under duress and saying, oh, yes, I like Putin.
I like Putin.
Let me put that on the record.
But I don't know if that's what it's like.
We'll find out in the days ahead.
I'm proud of this, and I think it's only the kind of journalism that independent citizen journalists can do.
I don't know why the CBC doesn't do it.
Maybe because they might be arrested by Putin.
Could be.
Or maybe they're just too in lockstep with Trudeau's government, which has this very special message track when it comes to Putin.
I've never seen Justin Trudeau be so bellicose in his life before.
His statements are very warlike, which is ironic given that the sanctions don't really seem to be doing anything against Russia.
And as you know, Trudeau lifted the sanctions so that Canadian firms could work on Russia's gas pipeline turbines.
They shipped those turbines to Montreal for SNC Lavalin to work on them.
And Trudeau, of course, he would do this for SNC Lavalan, lifted the sanctions.
So I find it confusing.
Our goal is to tell the other side of the story, which is just to tell the story.
The story that we could find on the streets of Russia.
What do people feel about conscription?
Do people think that the war's casualties are too high?
Do people think that the war is justified?
Do they, as sometimes happens here, oppose the war but support the troops?
I don't know.
And I hazard the statement that you don't know either because no other journalists are telling us.
Well, we're going to do our best to tell the story and to make sure the story can withstand any good faith scrutiny of being objective journalism.
You can see all of Jeremy's reports at RussianReports.com.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
Katie Davis Court reporting for Rebel News bringing you the latest insanity coming out of Seattle, Washington, as a taxpayer-funded organization has decided to award nonprofits owned by black Indigenous people of color with more than $1.3 million to give their leaders each $60,000 of taxpayer funds to take three-month sabbaticals and vacations.
The BIPOC Executive Directors Coalition, a multicultural collaborative of 240-plus nonprofit executive directors across Washington state, announced the funding in a press release that states 20 leaders and their organizations will receive $60,000 for three-month sabbaticals to cover salary and benefits, individual sabbatical expenses, and organizational developmental support.
In addition, 12 applicants will receive one-month respite awards to cover salary, benefits, and individual expenses.
Jody Nishiaka, the co-founder and co-executive director of the BIPOC Coalition, said in the press release that BIPOC leaders were being rewarded with these funds for much needed rest and restoration in order to heal from multi-generational trauma and years of nonstop working on behalf of their communities to recharge for the work ahead.
The release also detailed how the grantees will be spending their paid vacations and sabbatical time.
Brenda Rodriguez-Lopez from the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network said, This sabbatical will support me in healing from the trauma I have endured doing this work as an undocumented queer woman of color during the most violent times of our generation.
My vision is to show up for me as I have showed up for others.
Jamie Marsh, executive director at Food Empowerment Educational Sustainability Team, will be taking herself on a trip to Mexico and the French Riviera.
And when she returns, will be remodeling her living space.
Hamdi Adul, the executive director of the African Community Housing and Development, says that she will be using the funding to go on a lavish trip to Mecca and Dubai.
Well, guys, you can't help but wonder if this is a good use of taxpayer dollars, giving nonprofit organizations taxpayer money so they can give their employees three-month-long sabbaticals and paid vacations to anywhere they want in the world.
And some are even remodeling their own homes.
Wow, at the cost of taxpayers.
So if you would like to support Rebel News and believe in our mission of telling the other side of the story, please go to rebelnewsusa.com and consider making a donation.