Disgraced Ukrainian Ex-Army Spox Slams Zelensky’s Theatrics, Complains About Drugged Up Mercs

© AFP 2023 / ROMAN PILIPEY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.09.2023
Ukraine is fighting to protect “Western values” from Russian “slaves” descended from Mongols, but is facing difficulties due to poor morale, corruption, drug-addicted mercs, and a president who seems more focused on theatrics than the conflict itself, disgraced Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has revealed.
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (formerly Michael John Cirillo), the 46-year-old US-born Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson who garnered international media attention and scorn earlier this month after calling for Russian journalists and officials to be “hunted down,” was suspended last week as the scandal reached Washington.
Speaking by video on two separate occasions (before and after her suspension) with legendary Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, who posed as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Ashton-Cirillo revealed important details on the seedier underbelly of their work for Ukraine, including minutiae they didn’t really get into while acting as a military spokesperson.
Problems With Morale, Corruption and Mercs
“We’re having struggles on the information warfare front, and we have the morale issue,” Ashton-Cirillo revealed, saying they’d spoken to soldiers who are “very frustrated because they didn’t feel like they were being heard in certain areas.”
“And so we are dealing with the reality that until we win the information war, our Western partners won’t feel the pressure. But we must win the information war both here on the streets of Ukraine, and in the newsrooms in New York and London and elsewhere,” the spox said, pointing to their personal efforts to change language surrounding the conflict to smooth over unpleasant realities, like calling foreigners serving in the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces “foreign fighters” instead of what they actually are – mercenaries.
Commenting on the recent high-profile murder of a British merc in Ukraine by one of his comrades, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that Kiev has a “terrible problem” with “most” of the foreign fighters in the country, “because they are just a step above mercenaries and they come here because all they know is warfare. While I defend them in public, in private I know many of them have very far-right leanings, there’s some Nazi groups.”
“I also know that many of them are doing this because they have no lives in their own countries. And so we have security risks and more importantly we have morale and psychological issues because foreign soldiers are here for the money – most of them. And those people are going to be the ones willing to engage in drugs, willing to engage in fundraising where they’re putting the money in their own pockets. It’s something we have to be very careful about,” they stressed.
Commenting on the state of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that the situation is “terrible,” and appeared to confirm long-standing speculation about Ukrainian officials pilfering stocks of Western-supplied weapons deliveries.
Ashton-Cirillo also privately accused members of Ukraine’s political and military elite of “trying to profit off of the blood of our lost soldiers,” and “trying to profit off the blood of the men and women who are losing arms and legs.”
They also complained that the unrealistic promises being made to Kiev’s patrons, including about the now-stalled counteroffensive, means that “our partners can’t trust us in negotiations and our partners can’t trust our projection for what’s going to happen in the future. Because all they can judge us on are the results.”
The suspended spox stressed that while it’s okay to spread propagandistic “messaging” about Ukraine’s ‘successes’ on the battlefield in public, “it’s not good when we’re using this in discussions with our partners in Washington, our partners in Brussels, and especially our partners in the Eastern European nations.”
Ashton-Cirillo also took pot shots at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, emphasizing that his theatrics and “populism” are no longer of any value. “It’s been 19 months of this, it’s not about theater anymore. Theater was important in the first days and weeks. It’s not about populism sir. It’s not about populism on the world stage,” the ex-spox stressed, adding that they would be thrilled to join the ballot on Poroshenko’s European Solidarity in elections, if they end up being held.
Russians Should Be ‘Hunted Down’
Ashton-Cirillo doubled down in private to the pranksters on comments she made publicly calling for “Russian propagandists” to be “hunted down,” saying that Russian journalists “should not be able to hind behind” their status as news people, and that Kiev should use “all our weapons,” including attacks targeting Russian media figures and officials.
Recalling, for example, the tributes paid to the late Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bombing last year, Ashton-Cirillo suggested that “that goes to show that who she was in [Russia’s] eyes. It wasn’t some woman who was accidentally killed. This was an evil creature who died a death they deserved for trying to genocide innocent people.”
Ashton-Cirillo also reiterated that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova should “of course” be targeted for elimination. “The worst part with her is she gets accepted in the same way that a State Department spokesperson would be accepted. To me there’s nobody should be off limits…over the course of being able to carry out our full liberation.”
‘Russians are Not European’
Expanding on comments they have made publicly referring to Russians as inhuman “orcs,” Ashton-Cirillo offered their interlocutor a brief ‘history’ of the Russian people, emphasizing that “the reality is Russians are not European,” but “have a different culture.”
“Russians are Asian, and ultimately they do come from the Mongols, they do come from a grouping… of people who are wanting to be slaves and want to be led just as it was from the days of Genghis Khan. I wish the rest of Europe and the rest of the Western world understood that Europe ends at Ukraine. We are protecting European values and Western values the same way those did hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years ago when the Mongols were coming in,” Ashton-Cirillo said.
“While I don’t know every Russian, I will say that what’s happening in the Kremlin and what’s happening to every Russian that supports Vladimir Putin’s decisions are not human. These people are not human. They are enemies of humanity,” they added.
Post-Suspension Blues
In the second conversation, conducted after her suspension, Ashton-Cirillo called their removal “political,” and said the decision “came from the highest levels.”
“I was told that it came from New York… on the trip that the government is on currently,” the disgraced spox said, referring to Zelensky’s trip to the US last week. “I think I was told that they had to make a big deal and to shut me up in order to possibly get help, so that’s why I understand it. I understand it’s political. I’m still in the army, I’m still speaking to several high-level officers doing my other work, just not as spokesperson.”
Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.09.2023
Exactly a year ago three out of four Nord Stream pipelines running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea to provide Western Europe with natural gas were destroyed. Western investigators have so far failed to find the saboteurs behind the blast.
Gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline system were detected on 26 September 2022, with the EU leadership admitting that this could be the result of a “deliberate attack”.
Two days later, on 28 September, the Kremlin announced that Russia was ready to consider applications from EU countries for a joint investigation into the Nord Stream incident.
However, not only did the West snub Moscow’s request but also blamed Russia for destroying its own pipelines. Later, European and American officials backtracked on their accusations but fell short of naming a potential perpetrator.
On 12 October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident “an act of international terrorism”. Meanwhile, as gas prices soared and US energy producers secured lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with European countries, it became clear that Washington had been the major beneficiary from the Nord Stream destruction.
Furthermore, the US leadership had previously issued several threats that it would destroy the pipelines.
“We know that the United States President Joe Biden, threatened openly that he would stop Nord Stream 2 if the Russians were to militarily intervene in Ukraine,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief and now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “That was repeated by Victoria Nuland, who was Number Three at the State Department. She said basically the same thing. So we had the President and a senior official both saying that they would stop the pipeline if this were to happen. So we have a statement coming from the government itself saying it would do this.”
“And then I would say on top of that, the United States – given its military capabilities – had the capability to do this. They sent divers down to attach explosives and to arrange for a drone satellite that would ignite the charges and blow up the pipelines. It had the capability to do it. And it also had the motive, which was basically to weaken Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to affect politics in Europe. So this is what it was all about,” Giraldi continued.
On 8 February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell, detailing an apparent plot by Team Biden and the US intelligence community to blast the Nord Stream pipelines with the help of Norwegian operatives.
Reflecting on Hersh’s version, Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.”
“And I can confirm to you that Sy Hersh, whom I know somewhat, has excellent sources inside CIA and inside the Pentagon. So what he’s telling us comes straight from people who know about it,” the CIA veteran said.
Blame Game Time: The Andromeda Yarn
On 7 March, the US and German mainstream sources published two separate articles claiming that international investigators had managed to trace the 26 September 2022 sabotage attack to a “pro-Ukrainian” group operating from the Andromeda, a 15-meter chartered yacht. The story immediately prompted a lot of controversy.
German media, for example, asked how a 15-meter chartered yacht could carry the 1,500-2,000 kilograms of explosives needed to destroy the pipelines, adding that the Andromeda does not have a crane to hoist such quantities safely into the water. It was also unclear how the group of volunteers managed to transport that amount of explosives across Europe.
Another problem, cited by the press, was that at the site of the explosion, the depth of the Baltic Sea is about 80 meters, requiring special diving equipment which the private vessel lacked. On top of this, the gang of saboteurs returned the yacht in bad condition and even left a couple of fake passports on board which made the story even fishier.
Hersh ridiculed the mainstream media yarn while discussing it with an anonymous CIA operative familiar with the issue. According to Hersh, it’s not just a “bad” media story but a deliberate “parody” fed by the CIA to the US and German media.
“In the world of professional analysts and operators, everyone will universally and correctly conclude from your story that the devilish CIA concocted a counter-op that is on its face so ridiculous and childish that the real purpose was to reinforce the truth,” the investigative journalist wrote on 5 April.
The most recent Western media stories alleging Ukraine’s involvement don’t hold water, either, according to Giraldi:
“Look, when you’re doing things in the intelligence world, you look for corroborative details – details that tell you that this story is coming from a good source or that it is fundamentally correct. And I saw none of that in this story. There have been a number of stories, of course, about people from Ukraine having done this, or people even from Germany renting boats and going over there, and they didn’t know what nationality they were. I mean, these are repeated stories. I have no reason to assume that this story is correct.”
The CIA veteran goes on to say that at present there is no story that sounds as credible as Hersh’s version. Besides, the US had the motive; it had the capability to do it; and it also had the objective to do it as a way of weakening Russia’s ability to influence Western Europe, Giraldi summarized.
“So I think that a lot of the background or the backstory supports the fact that the United States basically did it, though, apparently with the assistance of the Norwegians, and I would imagine some of the other NATO allies were also briefed in a certain fashion. In other words, not all the details, but given some indication that something might be happening in the near future in the Baltic.”
Why Couldn’t EU Investigators Name the Culprit?
It’s hardly surprising that despite official investigations in three countries – Sweden, Denmark, and Germany – the question of who is responsible for the sabotage remains unanswered, according to Giraldi.
“The fact that there have been three investigations carried out means nothing because the three countries that carry out the investigation are all NATO members. So they would have no motive whatsoever to challenge the argument that this was carried out by the Russians themselves or by the Ukrainians,” the CIA veteran said.
However, Giraldi suspects that the German investigation probably came closest to the truth. However, what they told the public was essentially a narrative acceptable to the United States and to NATO. The former CIA field officer pointed out that Germany suffered the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
“Their economy is in trouble. They were dependent on Russian energy and so they are paying a price for it, and I’m sure that many Germans – I do know that many Germans are aware of this and are complaining that this ever took place. I was in Eastern Europe about two months ago, and I heard this a lot from Europeans, how stupid this whole thing was to destroy a resource that was very good for Europe as well as being good for Russia.”
According to Giraldi, it’s interesting to examine who else – apart from the US and Norway – was aware of the Nord Stream plot and was foolhardy enough to get involved in it. Giraldi doubted whether Berlin had been in collusion with the US and Norway from the beginning and said that it did not make sense for a country to sacrifice its own economy willingly.
Furthermore, the Nord Stream pipelines weren’t just a Gazprom asset, Giraldi emphasized: there were other countries – other companies from Western Europe – that participated in the project that had been worth billions of dollars. And because of the US plot, their money had been squandered and their infrastructure had suffered incalculable damage.
But the financial aspect is only half the story: the most worrying part is that those who blew the pipelines up risked escalating the crisis dramatically.
“The destruction of the pipeline was an act of war,” stressed Giraldi, “… so this is an interesting story if we ever find out the truth.”
On 17 September 2023, the First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said that Russia was calling for the UN Security Council to meet to discuss the Nord Stream gas pipelines and the council will gather on Tuesday, 26 September – a year after the sabotage occurred.
On 27 August, the Prime Minister of the German federal state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, announced the need to repair the damaged gas pipelines which he said will help to ensure the country’s energy supply for another five to 10 years.
Israel undercover forces kill Palestinian child after he discovers operation in Jenin

MEMO | September 21, 2023
Undercover Israeli Special Forces killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy when he saw them sneaking into the Jenin refugee camp during an operation, making it the latest arbitrary execution of a Palestinian by Occupation forces this year.
In a report yesterday by Defence for Children Palestine (DCIP), the Palestinian sector of Geneva-based Defence for Children International (DCI), Rafat Omar Ahmad Khamayseh left his grandfather’s house in the northern West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday this week, when he then “saw Israeli Special Forces exiting three Palestinian licensed cars and surround the home of the father of a Palestinian man wanted for arrest.”
The report stated that “Rafat fled, yelling, ‘Special Forces! Special Forces!’ One Israeli soldier chased Rafat and shot him in the abdomen from a distance of 10 meters”.
The Occupation forces then shot at the boy again, as a Palestinian man came to his aid and “threw himself on top of Rafat and rolled him toward his house, less than five meters away. The man and his family sheltered Rafat for about an hour and a half as the Israeli military prevented ambulances from accessing Jenin refugee camp.”
The boy was reported to have been “struck with one bullet that entered his abdomen and exited from the upper right side of his chest … He bled extensively from his mouth and nose while waiting for an ambulance.” The DCIP stated that “Rafat died before an ambulance transferred him to Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin.”
Khamayseh’s murder is the latest killing of a Palestinian – especially a minor – by Israeli forces or settlers this year, with at least 240 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip having reportedly been killed since the beginning of 2023, including 46 children.
The human rights group acknowledged the killing of Palestinian minors as a common practice by Occupation forces, stating in its report that “Investigations and evidence collected by DCIP regularly suggest that Israeli forces use lethal force against Palestinian children in circumstances that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings”.
‘Definite Causal Link’ Between COVID Vaccine Rollouts and Peaks in All-Cause Mortality, New Study Finds
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 20, 2023
A new study of 17 countries found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the rapid rollouts of the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
Researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest found more than half of the countries analyzed had no detectable rise in all-cause mortality after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 — until after the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
They also found that all 17 countries, which make up 10.3% of the global population, had an unprecedented rise in all-cause mortality that corresponded directly to vaccine and booster rollouts.
Through a statistical analysis of mortality data, the authors calculated the fatal toxicity risk-per-injection increased significantly with age, but averaged 1 death per 800 injections across all ages and countries.
By that calculation, with 13.5 billion injections given up to Sept. 2, 2023, the researchers estimated there were 17 million COVID-19 vaccination deaths (± 500,000) globally following the vaccine roll-out.
“This would correspond to a mass iatrogenic event that killed 0.213 (± 0.006) % of the world population and did not measurably prevent any deaths,” the authors wrote.
This number, they noted, is 1,000 times higher than previously reported in data from clinical trials, adverse event monitoring and cause-of-death statistics gleaned from death certificates.
In other words, “The COVID-19 vaccines did not save lives and appear to be lethal toxic agents,” they wrote.
The shots were the most toxic for the most elderly across all 17 countries analyzed.
The authors concluded governments should “immediately end the baseless public health policy of prioritizing elderly residents for injection with COVID-19 vaccines, until valid risk-benefit analyses are made.”
The 180-page paper, by Denis Rancourt, Ph.D. former physics professor and lead scientist for 23 years at the University of Ottawa, Marine Baudin, Ph.D., Joseph Hickey, Ph.D. and Jérémie Mercier, Ph.D. was published Sept. 17.
Using all-cause mortality to identify deaths caused by vaccines
All-cause mortality (ACM) — a measure of the total number of deaths from all causes in a given time frame for a given population — is the most reliable data used by epidemiologists for detecting and characterizing events causing death and for evaluating the population-level impact of deaths from any cause, the authors wrote.
Unlike other measures, ACM data are not susceptible to reporting bias or to biases that may exist in subjective assessments of the cause of death. Any event, from a natural disaster like an earthquake to a wave of seasonal or pandemic illness appears in ACM data.
Using methodologies developed in their previous research on COVID-19 and vaccination in India, Australia, Israel, the U.S. and Canada, the authors used changes in all-cause mortality rates to identify deaths associated with mass vaccination.
Rancourt told The Defender that after identifying the “stunning” correlation between vaccines, boosters and rising ACM in those five countries, the authors looked for other countries that had similar data so they could repeat the analysis to determine if the same synchronicity occurred.
They tracked and statistically analyzed the temporal relationship between spikes in national all-cause mortality rates, stratified by age where data were available, and the COVID-19 pandemic period and the vaccine and booster rollouts.
In other words, they analyzed whether “excess mortality” appeared following the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic and following the introduction of initial vaccines or booster shots relative to previous all-cause mortality rates.
Excess mortality is a term used in epidemiology and public health that refers to the number of deaths from all causes during a crisis above and beyond what we would have expected to see under ‘normal’ conditions, according to Our World in Data.
Controlling for confounding factors such as seasonality, the authors calculated the vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR) — the ratio of vaccine-attributable deaths to the number of vaccines given. They found it ranged from 0.02 to 5%, depending on country, age and number of shots given and that the overall, all-ages vDFR for all 17 countries averaged 0.126 ± 0.004%.
“These findings appear to confirm arguments made by biologists including Mike Yeadon and Sucharit Bhakdi that the dangers for adverse autoimmune reactions would be predicted to increase with each subsequent exposure to the transfection,” said Childrens’ Health Defense Staff Scientist J. Jay Couey.
Factors such as seasonal illnesses can complicate analysis of all-cause mortality rates, because deaths from things like respiratory illnesses tend to peak in winter.
To eliminate seasonality as a possible confounding factor, the Correlation researchers, examined all available data for countries that rolled out the vaccines but where there was no seasonal fluctuation (equatorial countries) or the vaccines/boosters were rolled out during the summer and so the effects of the rollouts could be seen most clearly.
Those countries, all located in the equatorial region or the Southern Hemisphere where the rollouts were in the summer, included Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand and Uruguay.
The authors are working on extending this analysis to all countries across the world where data is available, Rancourt told The Defender.
Vaccination associated with high all-cause mortality regime in all countries
In nine of 17 countries analyzed, there was “no detectable excess mortality in the year or so between when a pandemic is announced on 11 March 2020 and the starting time of the first vaccine rollout in each country,” the paper reported.
In Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paragua, Philippines, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand and Uruguay, excess mortality appeared only after the vaccine rollout.
In the other eight countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and South Africa — excess mortality can be seen prior to the vaccine rollout.
However, the researchers said, “In all 17 countries, vaccination is associated with a regime of high mortality, and there is no association in time between COVID-19 vaccination and proportionate reduction in ACM.”
Also, all 17 countries showed a strong correlation with higher rates of ACM in early 2021, following the initial vaccine rollout and in early 2022, when the boosters were rolled out.
The authors underscore the finding that where age-stratified data were available, there were “remarkable temporal associations” between rapid first dose and booster rollouts and immediate peaks in all-cause mortality, and the transition to what Rancourt called “a new regime in mortality, where the mortality just stayed high for a long time.”
The paper includes reporting, graphs and data analysis by a number of different methods showing the temporal relationships between the pandemic announcement, vaccines and spikes in all-cause mortality for each individual country.
Transitions between regimes of mortality — ACM by time (blue), vaccine administration by time (orange) and the average ACM by time (red). The March 11, 2020 pandemic declaration date is shown by a vertical grey line in each panel. The data sources are specified in Appendix A of the study. Credit: Rancourt, Baudin, Hickey and Mercier.
Causation, not just correlation
The authors argue the evidence collected supports a causal link between vaccines and high mortality rates.
First, they cite autopsy studies, adverse event monitoring and peer-reviewed publications, studies of vaccine-induced pathologies, analysis of adverse events in industry clinical trials and payouts from global vaccine injury compensation programs, which together they say demonstrate the COVID-19 vaccines caused many individual deaths.
Then they point to several population-level studies, including their own prior research, that demonstrated a likely causal link.
And they cite principles of immunology that explain the mechanisms from severe harm from the COVID-19 vaccines.
The authors also addressed and discounted several proposed alternative explanations for the spikes in ACM, including that those changes are due to seasonal variation, heat waves, earthquakes, conflict, COVID-19 countermeasures, underlying health conditions or the appearance of COVID-19 variants.
They argued that COVID-19 variant “waves” cannot explain the spikes, they wrote.
For that to occur, the new variants would have to cause simultaneous peaks and surges in mortality in 17 countries, “which is a statistically impossible occurrence if we accept the theories of spontaneous viral mutations and contact spreading of viral respiratory diseases; and all the resulting peaks of mortality would have the remarkable coincidence of occurring precisely when vaccine boosters were rolled out.”
The authors concluded that the strong correlation between vaccine rollouts and the new higher regimes of ACM shows causality, according to the “experiment, temporality and consistency” criteria laid out by Dr. John Ioannidis in a 2016 paper.
The same phenomenon, they write, is observed in different age and geographical settings (experiment), the rises in all-cause mortality are synchronous with the vaccine rollouts (temporality) and the phenomenon is qualitatively the same each time it occurs (consistency).
Prioritizing elderly people for vaccination was ‘reckless’
These “conclusive” findings contradict the common claims that the vaccines, despite their adverse effects, actually saved lives.
Instead, the authors write:
“We have found no evidence in our extensive research on ACM that COVID-19 vaccines had any beneficial effect. If vaccines prevented transmission, infection or serious illness, then there should be decreases in mortality following vaccine rollouts, not increases, as in every observed elderly age group subjected to rapid booster rollouts.”
To the contrary, the study confirmed the authors’ previous findings that vDFR grows exponentially with age. They found the risk of dying from the COVID-19 injection doubled with every 4-5 years of age, which is approximately half the doubling age of dying of all causes of mortality, including cancer, pneumonia and heart disease.
They found large and age-dependent values of vDFR in elderly people that included, for example, a rate of 0.55% (one death per 180 injections) for people 80 and over in Israel to 5% (one death per 20 injections) for people 90 and over in Chile and Peru.
That means, the authors said, that there is not and was never any age-stratified risk of fatality data to support the public health policies that prioritized elderly people for vaccination.
“Prioritizing elderly people for COVID-19 vaccination, in the absence of relevant data, was reckless.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Meet Ukrainian Military’s American Spokesman
Transgendered Sarah Ashton-Cirillo advocates free speech and killing journalists
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | SEPTEMBER 20, 2023
As our world gets weirder by the second, it has become ever harder to know if what we are presented with is real. Every time someone sends a report or video that is purportedly a representation of factual reality, I try to evaluate if it’s indeed real or if it’s propaganda, black propaganda, satire, or the creation of a mentally ill person.
This morning I saw a story about an American transgendered woman named Sarah Ashton-Cirillo who claims to be a soldier and an official spokesman of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces. She is in the news because of a publicized spat she is having with Senator JD Vance of Ohio who has made an inquiry to determine is Sarah Ashton-Cirillo really is an official English language spokesman for the Ukrainian TDF. Spoiler Alert: She really is.
Vance became aware of Ashton-Cirillo after he saw a video of the spokesman announcing that journalists who disseminate Russian propaganda will be hunted down and killed. In this video, she proclaims:
Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes. This puppet of Putin is only the first. Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down and justice will be served.

In response to Senator Vance’s query, Ashton-Cirillo posted yet another video in which she proclaims her support of the First Amendment, but hastens to add that reporting Russian propaganda is not protected by the First Amendment.

Who adjudicates what is Russian propaganda and what is merely critical reporting of the Ukrainian government and its U.S. government supporters?
The question touches on something I have frequently written about on this Substack—namely, the strange rise of ORTHODOXY in recent years. There are, we are told, certain major issues in which the ORTHODOX—that is, official U.S. government and MSM representations—cannot be questioned or criticized. Those who do question these orthodoxies will be censored, censured, or—if Ashton-Cirillo has her way—hunted down and killed.
The top four orthodoxies are what I call the Holy Quadripartitus of Piffle. They are:
1). COVID-19 vaccines are saving mankind. Anyone who questions the safety and efficacy of the vaccines is guilty of heresy.
2). The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is a sacred mission and no negotiated settlement with Russia shall be countenanced. Anyone who criticizes the Ukrainian and U.S. governments, and any attempt to understand the war from the Russian point of view, is guilty of heresy.
3). Human induced climate change will soon destroy the earth if trillions aren’t spent to overhaul our entire energy policy. Anyone who questions this proposition is guilty of heresy.
4). The concept of biological sex is a mere “construct.” Skilled surgeons and endocrinologists can transform a boy into a girl or vice versa. Anyone who questions this assertion is guilty of heresy.
I reject the Holy Quadripartitus of Piffle as fanatical, obscurantist, mentally ill nonsense.
American biological male spokesperson for Kiev threatens journalists, and now, election observers also
By Lucas Leiroz | September 18, 2023
Sarah Ashton Cirillo – also known as “Michael John”, an American biological male transgender citizen who works as spokesperson for Kiev, has made public threats on social media, promising to attack Russian and foreign civilian citizens who work as journalists and international observers. The case clearly shows the neo-Nazi and anti-humanitarian mentality of the Ukrainian regime, which openly states its intention to kill civilian and strategically irrelevant people.
In recent days, Sarah has threatened civilians several times. The first public statement of this kind was made on September 13, when the spokesperson promised to “hunt down” all Russian “propagandists” and punish them for the “war crimes” allegedly committed by Moscow. On that occasion, Sarah mentioned that in the “next week” – in this case the current one – “justice” would be “served” in Ukraine, suggesting that attacks against pro-Russian journalists could be close to happening.
“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes (…) Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” Sarah said at the time.
The case generated outrage among the Russians, who correctly interpreted Sarah’s threat as a risk to their lives. Officials reported the American-Ukrainian spokesperson’s words to international organizations and NGOs, in addition to calling on Russian security authorities to keep an eye on the case and avoid attacks on civilians.
However, as if threatening journalists were not enough, Sarah published on her social networks a few days later a list with the names of several foreign citizens who participated as observers in the recent elections in the four new Russian regions. According to Sarah, the list is made up of “of vultures feeding off the suffering of Ukrainians in temporarily occupied Ukraine.”
Considering the previously made threat to “hunt” journalists, it is possible to interpret the list of names as a true “hit-list”. Sarah appears to be creating her own “Myrotvorets”, exposing names and details of civilians so that Ukrainian intelligence and allied terrorists can find and kill them. This might seem “shocking” in other countries, but it already seems to be commonplace in Ukraine, as the neo-Nazi regime openly maintains a strategy of killing civilians.
Moscow reported the situation to the UN, with the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation in New York trying to draw the attention of diplomats from other countries to the serious threats made by the American citizen on behalf of the Ukrainian state. It is not yet known how the other diplomatic delegations will react to the case, but, considering that on previous occasions Russian reports had little effect, it is expected that the situation will not be resolved through diplomatic means.
Commenting on the case, Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende, who also worked as an observer in the elections, stated that Sarah is practicing terrorism by putting the names of civilians on death lists. As a European-born citizen exiled in Russia, Sonja says Western Europeans do not care about what happens to Russian civilians. According to her, if something similar had happened in Europe, those responsible would certainly be punished appropriately.
“It’s a threat to us all, to Western journalists, and all who are already on the Peacekeeper list (Myrotvorets), which is actually a kill list (…) [If something like this were happening in Europe] it would be terrorism. They would say ‘this is a crazy guy, or a woman.’ She’d be jailed or at least tried”, Sonja told journalists during an interview.
In fact, considering Ukraine’s terrorist past and the murders of Daria Dugina, Maxim Fomin (“Vladlen Tatarsky”) and Rostilav Zhuravlev, as well as several failed attempts to kill other civilians, it is very likely that Kiev’s intelligence services are planning something against Russian journalists and international observers in the near future. In addition to Sarah’s words, this is also in line with the promise made by Ukrainian military intelligence chief General Kirill Budanov, who stated in May:
“We’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine (…) We have already gotten many, including public and media personalities.”
Clearly, for Kiev there are no ethical or humanitarian limits. All Russian citizens – or simply foreigners who dialogue with the Russian side – are “legitimate” targets for the regime. The terrorist and neo-Nazi mentality of the Kiev Junta allows it to target people without military involvement, which drives the Russian forces to seek more incisive means to protect their citizens.
Given the West’s connivance with these crimes and the omission on the part of the international organizations, the Russian side will have to defend its people through military means.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
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