The American transgender woman Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, Ukraine’s new English-language spokesperson for their controversial “Territorial Defense Forces,” yesterday broadcast a threat to assassinate those who publicly voice the “Kremlin” line: “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. And this puppet of Putin is only the first. 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.”
Today Valery Fadeev, the chairman of the Russian presidential human rights council, urged national law enforcement to take it seriously. The remark appears to be “a threat of murder or serious bodily harm” and thus a crime under Russian law. “Considering the lamentable record of attempts on the lives of Russian journalists and public figures … Russian security services should pay attention to it.” He added that just because of its over-the-top presentation, it should not be dismissed out of hand.
Ashton-Cirillo, a “leftist” who attempted to organize the far right to a rally in Las Vegas, to disrupt the 2020 election, and who attempted to be an FBI informant against a Republican city council candidate, is not above making outlandish statements just to call attention to herself, and she has initiated a series of minute-long videos called “Russia Hates the Truth.” But Kiev has declared that the speech or writings of journalists, professors, politicians, etc., are to be treated as soldiers firing bullets, making them legitimate targets for elimination.
The hate and desperation she expresses may be her own, but it is coherent with the hitlists of Ukraine’s notorious “Myrotvorets” and of Kiev’s “Center for Countering Disinformation,” along with the assassinations of journalist Darya Dugina, military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, and others. Russia’s Federal Security Service reported that, in July, they busted a Kiev-run group believed to have intended to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak.
