The male-born American journalist, who got here out as trans in 2019, enlisted within the Ukrainian navy final yr
Ukraine has chosen transgender journalist Sarah Ashton-Cirillo to run its navy’s English-language propaganda operations, native outlet Strana reported on Tuesday.
Ashton-Cirillo, who was born a person and got here out as transgender in 2019, hosts the state-sponsored information program ‘Russia Hates the Fact’ – an official undertaking of the Ukrainian Protection Forces – the aim of which is alleged to be “countering Russian propaganda, disinformation and lies.”
The information outlet posted a clip from the most recent episode of this system, wherein the trans voice of Kiev describes the latest drone assaults in Moscow because the end result of a “prophecy” by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and insists that “Russia is defenseless, particularly at residence.”
The journalist, who traveled to Ukraine final yr to enlist as a fight medic, additionally hosts a program referred to as ‘Ukraine within the Know’, described because the “official English language information present of the territorial protection forces.”
4 months after sustaining accidents through the battle of Bakhmut in February, Ashton-Cirillo was despatched to the Territorial Protection Forces’ headquarters in Kiev and tasked with overseeing English language media tasks. Earlier than taking over the brand new place, the media darling took a visit again to the US to gin up help for continued funding for the Ukrainian navy. Washington has pledged $46.6 billion to Kiev’s armed forces – greater than half of the $76.8 billion it has despatched to the nation in complete since Russia’s navy operation started final yr.
Whereas insisting Ukraine values free speech, Ashton-Cirillo has warned journalists who don’t help the Zelensky regime that they need to count on an identical destiny to that of Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean-American commentator who was arrested at his residence in Kharkov by the SBU and was anticipated to be sentenced to 5 to eight years in a labor camp earlier than staging a failed escape try this week.
Ashton-Cirillo instructed El Pais in Could that there was one different trans soldier within the Ukrainian navy, a local Ukrainian, however that the profusion of media protection of Ashton-Cirilllo’s personal adventures was serving to to “normalize gender range” amongst a conservative inhabitants. On the identical time, the Florida-born journalist claimed to have “pour[ed] myself into my work and [left] gender identification apart” and to be “combating for the liberty of all people” reasonably than “any explicit collective.” Lower than a yr earlier than that, Ashton-Cirillo instructed Xtra Journal “I’m doing this [traveling to the frontlines of the Ukraine conflict] for the trans group.”
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