On 23 May 2023, Jeff Monson – a veteran mixed martial arts fighter and former UFC title challenger – arrived at the US consulate in Istanbul and officially turned his back on the land of his birth.
“I renounced my US citizenship because of the politics of this country,” Monson told Russian state-owned media agency TASS after handing over his American passport at the consulate. “All my thoughts and my future are connected only with Russia. Now I am no longer an American. I am only a Russian.”
Monson’s decision to surrender his US citizenship is the culmination of the 52-year-old’s evolution from American muscle to Russian wartime propagandist – a journey that is among the strangest career trajectories in sport.
A native of St Paul, Minnesota, Monson worked as a child psychologist specializing in trauma before embarking on a career as a fighter. He quickly established himself as one of the world’s top submission grapplers by winning a gold medal at the 1999 Abu Dhabi Combat Club championship. He also earned his nickname, The Snowman, a surprisingly gentle moniker for a 240lb fighter with the words “Destroy Authority” tattooed around his neck.
In 2000, Monson signed with the UFC but was released after a loss to Chuck Liddell, who would go on to become one of the UFC’s top stars. Undeterred, Monson fought his way back to the organization, compiling an impressive 3-0 winning streak that earned him a shot at the heavyweight title. However, Monson fell short against champion Tim Sylvia at UFC 65 in 2006, leading to his departure from the organization.
Monson then became one of the sport’s most popular mercenaries, fighting for any organization that would offer him a pay check. Over the course of the next decade, Monson competed for approximately 40 different MMA organizations in more than a dozen countries. This included Russia, where he would eventually take part in a fight that would change his life.
In 2011, Monson accepted a fight against Russia’s Fedor Emelianenko, who at the time was considered the best heavyweight the sport had to offer. The fight took place at the Olympic Arena in Moscow and was attended by Vladimir Putin. Despite breaking his leg during the fight, Monson chose to continue for the remainder of the bout. His performance earned respect from Putin, who lauded Monson for embodying the “Russian spirit.” Monson continued to compete in Russia, and he quickly emerged as one of the country’s most popular fighters.
By 2015, Monson was seeking Russian citizenship. He wrote an op-ed for Newsweek the following year explaining his decision. According to Monson, it was “due to my solidarity with the Russian people, something I felt when I first visited Russia in 2011. I felt deep down right away that this is my home – the one place I feel at peace with myself and my surroundings. And it was as unexpected for me as it would be for nearly any American.”
Monson, a self-proclaimed anarchist, stepped into Russia’s political ring in 2016 when he joined the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as a special representative of the party’s sports club. Several months later, Monson became the first American to accept citizenship in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, a pro-Russian occupied region in eastern Ukraine that operated as an unrecognized breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022.
In 2018, Monson became the latest in a series of Western celebrities to be granted Russian citizenship by Putin, following in the footsteps of US boxing legend Roy Jones Jr and actor Steven Seagal. He was also elected to the council of deputies in Krasnogorsk, a small city just outside Moscow, that same year. Despite his previous affiliation with the communists, Monson was listed as a candidate under the country’s ruling party, United Russia, of which Putin is the unofficial leader.
Over the past few years, Monson has grown increasingly critical of the US government, and particularly Washington’s foreign policy. His disenchantment with the US’s socio-economic and political policies have made him popular with Russia’s state-run media, and he was even given his own show, Monson TV, on the state-owned Russia Today. However, it wasn’t until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that Monson cemented his status as a Kremlin propagandist.
In April 2022, the All-Russia People’s Front – a political coalition started by Putin – posted several videos featuring Monson parroting Kremlin misinformation about the country’s intention to rid Ukraine of supposed fascism. He later collaborated with Donald Courter, a correspondent with RT, on a documentary that portrayed Russia as the savior of the Donbas, a region in Eastern Ukraine that is partially occupied by Russia as a result of the ongoing war.
Monson later took aim at Ukrainian heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk, posting a video (on the same channel run by Courter) that claimed to “fact check” Usyk’s statements about the conflict. Usyk had previously compared Putin to Adolf Hitler and said that Russia was to blame for the conflict with Ukraine. Monson responded by calling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “fascist dictator” and blamed Ukraine for the ongoing military offensive in the Donbas region.
Monson has since continued to give scathing interviews targeting US foreign policy in Ukraine. In a recent interview with Sputnik, a Russian state-owned media agency that is banned in the European Union, Monson claimed that the narrative that Russia “invaded” Ukraine was fabricated by mainstream media in the US.
“You don’t have to force people with a gun,” Monson said just days after surrendering his US passport. “In America, they don’t take a gun to your head and say, ‘Hey, you need to do this.’ No, no, no. They educate you and tell you what’s going on, what they want you to believe. And then you’re going to freely do what they want.”
Monson is not the first American to pledge allegiance to Russia’s cause. In February, Putin awarded Seagal the Order of Friendship for his “great contribution to the development of international cultural and humanitarian cooperation.” The actor had previously served as a special representative for the Russian foreign ministry, was outspoken in his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and recently established an All-Russian Aikido Centre in Moscow to train young Russians for army service.
“These arts can make this world a better place,” Seagal said during the inauguration ceremony.
The question many will ask of Seagal and Monson is simple: a better world for whom?
