{"id":103775,"date":"2025-12-29T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T16:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/103775\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T16:23:08","slug":"what-happened-to-texas-father-who-fled-to-russia-to-escape-woke-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/103775\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to Texas father who fled to Russia to escape \u2018woke\u2019 America?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek and DeAnna Huffman worried that American culture was poisoning their three daughters. Desperate, they left Humble, a suburb of Houston, earlier this year and moved to Russia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The family settled into their new home outside Moscow, detailing their lives on a YouTube channel. After DeAnna shared that her husband was sent to the front line in Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine<\/a>, the family\u2019s story went viral.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe feels like he\u2019s being thrown to the wolves right now, and he\u2019s kind of having to lean on faith, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re all doing,\u201d DeAnna said, adding that he did not speak Russian and had not received pay from the military yet.<\/p>\n

What happened to Derek Huffman?<\/p>\n

Breaking News<\/p>\n

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According to the family\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>, Derek Huffman spent two weeks at home this fall on vacation from the Russian army. <\/p>\n

A video shared in late October showed Huffman signing documents for his Russian citizenship, which the government expedited in exchange for his military service. He said his wife and daughters would apply for citizenship in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy that I\u2019m still alive and doing what I can to survive, and be of service to Russia,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m so thankful to all the Russian people who have reached out and helped my family while I\u2019ve been gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Derek<\/p>\n

In an email to The Dallas Morning News, Deanna Huffman said the family is not doing interviews at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll our thoughts feelings and journey is on our YouTube channel,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThank you for your understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Videos shared on YouTube show Huffman taking his daughters out for ice cream, eating fried rice and chicken with his family and wandering around a mall in Moscow, which he said was \u201cabsolutely beautiful\u201d and \u201cunlike anything you see in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one video, Huffman said that he could not provide information on his previous deployment for safety reasons, but that he was learning the Russian language and was proud to have shot down a drone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a drone that might have killed one of my brothers,\u201d he said before thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Roughly 1 million Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in the country\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, according to various reports. Of those, as many as 250,000 are dead. Roughly 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since the war began.<\/p>\n

Huffman said he was returning to service in a video shared in November, and that his next break would be in six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI miss my girls and wife so much,\u201d he said. \u201cI even miss the dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Idealogical immigrants\u2019<\/p>\n

The Huffmans are among thousands of so-called \u201cidealogical immigrants\u201d who have moved to Russia in recent years. Another Texas family, the Hares, who lived in Abilene, moved to the country in 2023 to seek what they called \u201ctraditional values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the Huffmans, Leo and Chantelle Hare detail their family\u2019s life on a YouTube channel<\/a>. Also like the Huffmans, they said they left the United States because they worried their children were being indoctrinated to support LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n

Russia has adopted a slew of laws targeting gay and transgender people and banned public displays of LGBTQ identity, including rainbow flags.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Putin signed a decree for a \u201cshared values\u201d visa for people from 47 countries Russia considers unfriendly, including the United States, Britain and much of Europe. The decree provides humanitarian support and a residency permit to people who \u201cshare traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we left, it was final,\u201d Chantelle Hare said in a video. \u201cWe don\u2019t plan to come back. There will not be anything to come back to.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a video<\/a> posted in November, Huffman shared a clip of an interview he did with a Russian state media outlet discussing why his family left the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to take God out of everything,\u201d he told the outlet. \u201cIt\u2019s very dangerous for children, especially in the big cities. A lot of crime, homelessness, drugs. We wanted a safe place to raise our children.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derek and DeAnna Huffman worried that American culture was poisoning their three daughters. Desperate, they left Humble, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[287,27,29,28,10487,3703],"class_list":{"0":"post-103775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-politics","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-texas-headlines","11":"tag-texas-news","12":"tag-ukraine","13":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}