I dont buy this story because of how cliche it is. There is this general attitude that eastern Europe is this lawless, corrupt land and that Slavs are these careless, militaristic, drunken badasses who dont care about laws and just do whatever they want. This kind of predjudice can be used to make you believe things without questioning them, because after all its Russia.
Of course you can just go into a supply depo and buy military hardware. Of course the commander is a corrupt swine who will sell you grenades no questions asked. Of course he sits on the crates smoking a cigarette. Of course he is selling guns to foreigners. Haha look, he takes Vodka for payment, he is Russian after all, Russians love Vodka. Thats just how Russia is.
But what if the grenades were used in some sort of attack? What if Lazernig got caught at customs with an unregistered handgun? What if the higher ups realized that the balance sheet didnt add up? See if you live in some sort of organized state and you work in a state controlled institution like the military, you cant just be a "fooking legend" because there is a bureaucracy that keeps you in check.
Now if that supposed story happened in the 90s, I would believe it because Russia was a failed state at that point and throwing grenades innawoods would have been one of the more harmless things to do. But in the 2000s things were different. Putin, for all his faults, stabilized the country and turned Russia into a functioning state with an actual government and an economy again.
So I really doubt this happened except I guess he was somewhere in Siberia but then I doubt he would find a bf over there lol.
Now maybe I lack context but I think this guy is a compulsive liar and indeed shouldnt be trusted without some source backing up what he says. And it really shows how devious he is. My guess is he told this story to show that he doesnt hate Russians, after all he had a Russian boyfriend and he even went to Russia! See, he doesnt hate Russians he just hates their government. He pretends to humanize Russians, but at the same time he is propagating this propaganda image of Russians being lawless brutes, idiots who smoke cigarettes sitting on explosives and who will sell you a gun no questions asked. What he really does is dehumanize Russians by making a joke out of them while painting himself in a good light.
And of course the "good Russian" in that story is some sodomite. Thats probably the least believable part of the story, that this ugly Scottish soyboy would find a bf in Russia.
I'm willing to trust that he did have a Russian boyfriend and even went there, a long time ago. Like, over ten years ago.
Everybody looks at Putin now and sees the autocrat that he is, but back in the 00s and early 10s a lot of people still believed he was a liberalizing force for Russia, that he was in fact going to turn the ship around and make it a decent place to live. And he did bring about a fair amount of prosperity by selling a shitton of natural gas to Europe. The point is, Russia was a semi-hot tourism destination for a short while (after the Yeltsin-era chaos and before the hardening of the Putin regime in the mid-late 2010s) and there was some cultural interest in it from the West. Some cultural exports, too. Anyone remember Tatu? If I'm getting the timeline right, LazerPig would have been a late teen, young adult at the peak of that cultural move, and while Russia has
always been hostile to gays things weren't quite so bad back then*. So him meeting a young Russki online and making arrangements to go visit him isn't really out of the ordinary.
As for the rest: pretty sure he's embellished everything there but I would not be surprised if his BF could get them a box of grenades if he already knew the guy at the supply base. Everything in Russia is based on who you know, so if the guy already knew the kid (or the kid's parents) and trusted him not to chuck the grenades into the local FSB office there was no reason not to make some quick buck selling government property. Coming out of the 90s, low-ranking Russian army personnel were scraping by as best they could. That much is well documented.
Otherwise, I agree with you: his framing and dramatic flair are obviously trying to shield him from any accusations of "Russophobia", but at the same time he does the usual "progressive" bullshit of going too far with the stereotype and making it offensive. My guess is that he started out as a Russophile in old online forums (would be interesting if we could find his old accounts, assuming these forums are even accessible these days) in order to stand in opposition to the long-running wehraboos out there, and then gradually soured on it. And of course, since he has low self-esteem, he can only bounce between extremes of thought. So anything that he sours on
has to be the worst thing ever. And here we are.
* Despite Russia's reputation as a police state they still mostly operate on "don't be a faggot in public, faggot", or by using anti-gay laws to silence political threats with potentially fabricated accusations. Like with most police states, you usually only get into trouble when you draw attention to yourself.