President Zelensky, Meet Bud Light!

I'm intrigued by the controversy surrounding Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, most recently characterized as a 46-year-old man from Florida named Mike, because it raises several questions about our involvement in Ukraine.

Sen J D Vance raised the right issues over how Ashton-Cirillo wound up in the news:

Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance wrote this week to top Biden administration officials demanding information on the American citizen after Ashton-Cirillo posted a video on social media declaring that Ukraine was planning to “hunt down” alleged Russian propagandists.

The letter itself reads in part,

I’ve seen claims this individual is an American, a former intelligence operative in the United States, and an employee of the Ukrainian government. Others have argued Ashton-Cirillo is pulling an elaborate prank.

. . . Is this individual an American citizen? Did they ever serve, in any capacity, in American intelligence services?

Sen Vance's questions open the door to what I think is perfectly reasonable surmise: how did it come about that this American guy in a wig and fake boobs became an official spokestrans for the Ukrainian military? Did he have help? Going back to the Wikipedia entry I linked on Tuesday, Ashton-Cirillo simply doesn't seem to have the resources to fly around the globe at whim, which appears to be part of his background:

According to her byline with The Nevada Independent, she has lived in Las Vegas since 2004; according to the Nevada Current she "established residency [there] in 2016 to be closer to" her ex-wife and child. In this phase of her life, she worked as a real estate analyst, a poker player, and the communications director at a healthcare company.

. . . In 2015, before her gender transition, Ashton-Cirillo went to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey to report on the refugee crisis, having been afraid to enter Syria itself.

. . . Ashton-Cirillo said that she began to "hate Russia" after visiting museums in the Baltic States while she was writing a novel, Fair. Right. Just., which she self-published in 2017. When Russia invaded Ukraine in full in February 2022, she traveled to Ukraine with plans to write a book on both the resulting refugee crisis and her previous experience with the Syrian refugee crisis.

Beginning about 2018, he underwent gender transition, including gender-affirming surgery. According to this site, "The cost of medical treatments can add up to more than $100,000, and they’re often not covered by health insurance." The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health says,

In the first five years, the researchers found, providing health care for transgender people cost between $34,000 and $43,000 per year of quality of life; after 10 years, the cost dropped to between $7,000 and $10,000 per year of quality of life.

Add to this the cost of self-publishing his various books and the opportunity cost of travel -- not only does he pay for air fare, food, and lodging, but he isn't getting an income while he's in Syria, the Baltics, and Ukraine. How is he paying for all this? And who vouches for him? He must have handlers. Who are they? This puff piece from last May in the Washington Blade unintentionally raises these questions:

The Blade first spoke with Ashton-Cirillo last December while she was in D.C. to speak with lawmakers on behalf of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry about the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s medical needs.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden and spoke to a joint session of Congress less than three weeks after the interview.

Ashton-Cirillo early last month became a junior sergeant. She returned to D.C. on May 15.

Ashton-Cirillo met with U.S. Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) and aides for U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) before she left the nation’s capital on May 19. Ashton-Cirillo also spoke to journalists from the Global South at the National Press Club and met with José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen continues to operate in Ukraine, and Amnesty International representatives.

Somebody scheduled all those meetings and convinced all those journalists and politicians he was worth their time. Who was behind this? What was the agenda? And Sarah/Mike seems to fly back and forth from Ukraine to Washington pretty frequently -- even if it's on discount flights, I doubt if the pay of a Ukrainian junior sergeant covers it.

But let's ask another set of questions, that Sen Vance has also brought up:

[T]he U.S. State Department confirmed that the American government is aware that a citizen journalist, known as Gonzalo Lira, is currently in prison in Ukraine. Lira has reportedly been accused by the Ukrainians of having “had a criminal intent aimed at the manufacture, distribution materials containing justification, recognition as legitimate, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, as well as justification, recognition as legitimate of the temporary occupation of part of Ukraine territory.”

Ashton-Cirillo has publicly admitted to being involved in the prosecution of Lira, who is a dual citizen of the United States and Chile. Last week, the transgender spokesperson claimed to have met with Lira while giving testimony in the case, claiming that the YouTuber is in good mental and physical health. Lira has previously claimed to have been tortured and extorted while in prison after being arrested initially in May.

So Ashton-Cirillo has admitted to some role in trhe prosecution of Gonzalo Lira -- but wait a moment. Isn't he just a combat medic and a junior sergeant, or something like that? What's he doing with the organs of Ukrainian state security and their gulag? Here's what we currently know about Gonzalo Lira:

The State Department has confirmed that American citizen Gonzalo Lira is being held in a Ukrainian prison over charges related to his speech and views on the war in Ukraine.

Lira is a popular YouTuber and journalist who was arrested by the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) in May for creating content that was critical of the Ukrainian government and explaining how the Russia-Ukraine war was provoked. He was charged over claims that he “justified the Russian invasion.”

. . . “We are aware of the detention of Mr. Lira in Ukraine. We take our role in assisting US citizens abroad seriously and are providing all appropriate assistance,” a State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News on Tuesday.

“We are monitoring the situation but have no further comment at this time. We reiterate our message that US citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict,” the spokesperson added.

So the State Department is telling US citizens not to travel to Ukraine, but it's hard to avoid thinking that Sarah/Mike is there under some sort of tacit understanding that this is OK, and indeed, to mess around with other US citizens there, to the point of having them sent to the gulag for wrongthink. In any case, yesterday, as soon as the case hit the news via Sen Vance,

The Ukrainian military has announced that it has suspended controversial transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo for allegedly making unapproved statements on social media; however, there have been no updates from the Ukrainians or the Biden administration on the fate of an American citizen journalist currently imprisoned in Ukraine.

Following a row sparked by inquiries initiated by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), as reported by Breitbart News, the Command of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) announced on Wednesday that Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, an American transgender individual, has been suspended from the role of spokesperson.

So, what's Sarah/Mike's current role? Is he going to stay in Ukraine? Doing what? On whose dime? Is he still in the Ukrainian armed forces as a combat medic or whatever despite his suspension as spokestrans? If not, when will he return to the US? As what? On whose dime?

Sarah/Mike is an expensive project. Somebody's paying for it. I like Sen Vance's initiative, I hope he keeps it up, because I think we have a great deal more to learn.

But another problem is that Mike Ashton-Cirillo could well become Ukraine's Dylan Mulvaney, the public face of the whole ongoing fiasco. I think President Zelensky belatedly woke up to this yesterday.