I Was Arrested And Detained In Far Eastern Russia (#213)

I was warned before going to Russia. All of my family and friends tried to convince me not to go, fearing the worst if I went. “You’re American, they’ll lock you up for nothing!”. I wasn’t naive, but I never seriously believed Russia would arrest a vlogger and accuse him of being an American spy.

Sadly, they were right, and I was wrong.

I’m going to tell you the story of how I was arrested in Russia and nearly had my life destroyed. This happened in the Jewish Autonomous Region, a place that was founded as a homeland for the Jews of Russia, and then just a few short years later, a place for Stalin to purge them instead. Ironically there were almost no Jews left in the region, which should have been enough of a warning sign for me. The region was so brutal that even its namesake inhabitants had all fled.

There’s a reason Russia’s Far East is rarely visited, and it’s not just because it’s so far from Moscow. Follow me on this journey, and learn from my mistakes.

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