American “Happy Milkman” says his family faces deportation from Russia VIDEO

American farmer Justas Walker, widely known in Russia as the “Happy Milkman”, has said he and his family may be deported from the country, becoming the third American Protestant to face expulsion from Russia this summer.

Sharing a post on Telegram, he noted that the development came as a shock, Caliber.Az reports.

"We got a call and were told something hard to comprehend and impossible to believe — that my family is being deported from the country. It's a huge shock for us," he added.

Walker moved to Russia from the United States in 1994 at the age of 11 with his parents, who were Protestant missionaries. When the family returned to the US in 2000, he chose to remain in Russia, where he married, raised three children and became a farmer while continuing his parents' missionary work.

Since 2016, Walker has lived in Russia's Altai region with his wife, Rebecca, and their daughters Tirzah, Adara and Kirsten. He said he has not yet been informed of the reason for the deportation order and plans to review the official documents on Monday.

Walker gained nationwide attention in August 2014 after appearing in a television report on Russia's import substitution drive following Western food sanctions.

During the interview, he joked that Russians would have to do without Italian cheese, earning him the nickname “Happy Milkman”.

His case follows two similar expulsions of American Protestant missionaries this year.

In June, Pastor Paul Gione was deported from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky after being accused of "illegal missionary activity" for holding a religious discussion without the required authorisation and inviting worshippers to pray for US President Donald Trump.

The same month, American Hare Krishna preacher Brian Tibbitts was expelled from Tuapse under the same charge after speaking to children at the Morskaya Volna summer camp.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov