Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo   (trans woman, journalist, propagandist)
Born	Michael John Ashton-Cirillo 9 July 1977
Nationality	American
Other names	Sarah Cirillo,Sarah Ashton,Blonde
American citizen working as spokesperson for the Ukrainian military. As of late September 2023, suspended from role as a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military, after publicly promising to hunt down and punish all "Russian propagandists" around the world.

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, (born Michael John Ashton-Cirillo) is an American former journalist. As of late September 2023, she was suspended from her role as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant, after publicly promising to hunt down and punish all "Russian propagandists" around the world.

Transgender journalist

A self-described "recovering political operative" from Las Vegas, Nevada, she was active in Nevada politics from 2020 to 2021, including an abortive run for Las Vegas City Council. She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously been a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry of Defence, and a combat medic.

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo reported on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kharkiv, Ukraine, primarily for LGBTQ Nation, often writing about the war's effect on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. A trans woman, she is thought to have been the first openly transgender war correspondent and the only transgender journalist covering the invasion. In Kharkiv, she worked closely with the Ukrainian military and police, and was appointed by the mayor of Zolochiv, Kharkiv Oblast, as a representative to advocate with aid groups. After witnessing and reporting on the October 2022 Kyiv missile strikes—including posting a controversial widely shared video that showed a dead body—she resigned from LGBTQ Nation to become a combat medic in Ukraine's Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, a Crimean Tatar unit.

Wounded

In February 2023, she was wounded by Russian shelling while serving on the front lines in the Donbas with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Kharkiv Defence Brigade. She was subsequently assigned to the Territorial Defence Forces, and became one of its English-language spokespeople in early August 2023; she was suspended in late September pending investigation of unspecified unapproved statements.

Hunt down propagandists

On 20 September 2023, Glenn Greenwald posted on X:

Ukraine's military has long been employing a disturbed American, @SarahAshtonLV, as its English spokesperson.

We covered last week their insane, deranged threats to hunt down and punish all "Russian propagandists," meaning anyone (including Americans) critical of Ukraine:

Other views

In several prank calls with Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus, who were pretending to speak on behalf of former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, Ashton-Cirillo said that "Russians are not Europeans," and that they “come from the Mongols" and are "part of a group of people that want to be slaves and want to be led." Elsewhere in the conversation with the pranksters, the former spokesperson revealed some issues plaguing Ukraine’s forces, stating that there is a "terrible problem with foreign fighters" because they are “just a step above mercenaries."

The calls are said to have taken place before and after Kiev fired her following her public threats to "hunt down" Russian "propagandists" around the world.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 21 September 2023.
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