The dopey American
Yes, even tail-wagging Putinists like Jackson Hinkle can't count on privacy in Russia
God knows, I have tried to avoid writing about the grinning gnome known as Jackson Hinkle. This diminutive pro-Russian internet troll is so hungry for attention that you want to avoid giving it to him at all costs.
However, after getting way too many naive and downright inane responses when I joked about Hinkle’s trip to Russia, I feel like I need to set the record straight:
Yes, surveillance of Americans is commonplace in the Russian Federation, including surveillance of Americans who scream that they love Putin.
This isn’t the plot of Red Sparrow. It’s not a sexy conspiracy. It’s a mundane fact of life in the Russian Federation. Talk to any State Department person if you don’t believe me, they’ll confirm.
For some reason, people think that surveillance will involve recording sexy videos of Hinkle banging his hot Russian girlfriend (more on her in a second), but that’s not how kompromat works.
Hinkle wants everyone to know that he’s banging a hot Russian — how else to make up for his anxiety about his height and God knows what other matters related to size? — the goal of kompromat is to be embarrassing and potentially damaging.
In Hinkle’s case, this can involve weird fetishes, drugs, financial issues, or anything else that can be used to control him effectively. Why would Russians need to do this to an American who loves them? Well,
a) Russian officials hate Americans as a rule, and GOD I wish people would just understand the insecurity and revanchism that drives this hate.
b) Russians view Americans who love the Kremlin as traitors; traitors are not to be trusted and thus need to be controlled, just in case. I know I keep saying this, but for whatever reasons it just doesn’t seem to register, so here I am, saying it again.
c) The Russian state is coercive in nature. Russian institutions work differently from American institutions. Within these institutions, human beings are viewed as incentivized either by fear or by money or sex or whatever, never anything noble or even interesting. Russian officials may blather on about the “friendship of nations,” but they don’t actually believe in these things. They think everyone else is as craven as they are. So having a known internet personality visit Russia and not tail/surveil him in order to have dirt on this subject that could be useful later would be simply dumb.
d) Any FSB agent worth his salt wants to have an American on the hook, even a random American. It’s a good way to get promoted.
What makes Hinkle’s case stand out is that he’s dating Anna Linnikova, Miss Russia 2022, whose claim to fame is pouting about how she was being shunned at Miss Universe earlier this year.
Linnikova’s country may rain bombs on civilians from Syria to Ukraine, steal children, and use mass rape and torture as weapons of war, but all of that frankly pales in comparison to not being invited to lunch with fellow beauty queens while hanging out in New Orleans. It’s an enormous tragedy, and I look forward to the candlelight vigil.
People have been making claims that Linnikova worked as an escort while in Dubai, and circulating screenshots from an escort page featuring her photos. I have not been able to confirm the veracity of these claims at this time — escort sites regularly steal photos from models, and while Linnikova was in Dubai in 2020, as her public Instagram confirms, there’s no smoking gun that I know of (hit me up if you think otherwise).
HOWEVER. Linnikova’s story is interesting. She went from being a model mostly working in East Asia and complaining about living in filthy dorms to winning the Miss Russia crown. Her family is not wealthy, and in interviews she’s spoken about helping out her parents financially, as we can see here for example:
When it comes to Miss Universe, the Russians likely knew that they weren’t going to grab a title in New Orleans. In a way, it made sense to someone who would receive a lot of online abuse as the result of her participation — and Linnikova fits the bill; she’s not some well-connected businessman’s daughter, but considering her love of luxury and travel, she’d have no problem going.
It has to be said that pretty Russian women from humble families are a kind of currency for the Russian Federation. The Russian security services have an easy time co-opting them. Again, it doesn’t need to be a sexy Red Sparrow conspiracy, but Linnikova does likely have a sponsor or two, and who knows how said sponsors are connected to the Russian government (there’s no such thing as “independent” Russian businessmen, especially not today).
It would be naive to think that Linnikova is not some kind of asset, and no, you don’t have to train at Sexy Russian Spy School to become one. You don’t even have to be fully aware of the ways in which you are being used, you just have to be along for the ride, and Linnikova, with her looks and rah rah patriotic Instagram posts about mother Russia fits the bill.
Honestly, these people are all distasteful, and I wish they could all fade away so I could write about other things. Still, I chuckled at this Urban Dictionary entry:
And by the way, no, Linnikova is not the model from that famous and oft-parodied Bentley ASMR ad. That would be Alla Bruletova. Yes, I did look this up, that’s why they pay me the big OSINT bucks.
Thank you for reading and don’t forget to subscribe! Writing about the hellhole known as the Russian Federation seriously breaks my brain at times, but you, my readers, make it worthwhile.