An American Face-Tattooed Barber Goes to Mariupol

He's following in the footsteps of the late Russell "Texas" Bentley

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

Last December I wrote about an American who was born Greg Rossell but is better known as Teddy Boy Greg. He is a barber by trade who is also into rockabilly and tattoos, which you can easily guess just by looking at him.

He had a history of making statements that are racist, homophobic, and antisemitic. He also grew tired of living in the United States so the year after he voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election he decided to move to Moscow where he opened Teddy's Rock n Roll Barbershop. He achieved new levels of fame in the West after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when this photo of him suddenly went viral online followed by this article in the British publication The Mirror, which documented his then-most recent tattoo: a letter Z on his chin so you'd know where he stands on the Russia-Ukraine war.

In the most recent article about him in the Western media, a 2022 Newsweek article, Teddy Boy Greg announced that he was going to travel to the Russian-occupied Donbass region of Ukraine so he could interrogate—in his words—“Western scum.”

There was no further word as to whether he actually traveled to the Donbass that year. According to this most recent thread on Twitter/X, Teddy Boy Greg has joined a Russian paramilitary group known as Espanola and he is now serving in Mariupol, the Ukrainian city that Russia had nearly demolished before taking it over. Here he is in full uniform.

He gave this interview as he was moving from Moscow to Mariupol where he said that part of his duties will be serving as an English language propagandist for Espanola.

He also started a new Telegram channel called TeddyBoy_Greg Espanola 🇷🇺 Z where you can keep up with his latest exploits. The Espanola group that he's serving with also have their own Telegram channel as well.

It looks like he's following a similar path that the late Russell “Texas” Bentley took. He'd better hope that his Russian comrades don't turn on him like they turned on Bentley.

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