https://en.sputniknews.africa/amp/20230915/1062122795.html
Ukraine's Military Speaker Threatens to 'Hunt Down' Russian Journalists
10:27, 15 September 2023
Ukrainian military's official spokersperon, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (formerly Michael John Cirillo), has released an emotionally charged video message on X, threatening Russian and pro-Russian journalists with violence.
Smearing and dehumanizing targeted reporters as "war criminal propagandists" Ashton-Cirillo claimed that they will be "hunted down" and then "justice will be served."
The speaker particularly hinted that "next week" the world will see Moscow's "favorite criminal propagandist" "pay" for Russia's "crimes."
While Ashton-Cirillo did not name the alleged victim, some Russian bloggers assumed that the speaker meant RT and Sputnik Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, who earlier received death threats from Ukrainian nationalists.
In August 2022, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion* sent a letter to Simonyan saying that they had "sentenced" her "to death" for supporting Russia's military operation in Ukraine. In July 2023, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had detained members of a neo-Nazi group plotting to kill the Russian journalist.
The Kiev regime and the country's nationalist battalions are well known for suppressing the freedom of speech and persecuting Ukrainian and foreign journalists.
Ukraine's infamous Mirotvorets website maintains a "kill list" containing personal data of dissenting reporters, politicians, opposition figures, bloggers, and even children, who are labeled "enemies of Ukraine."
Every time an individual on the list is killed, a "liquidated" inscription appears on his or her photograph on the website. Those murdered include Ukrainian publicist Oles Buzina, legislator Oleg Kalashnikov, Russian journalists Zemfira Suleimanova, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, Russian photojournalist Andrey Stenin, Italian freelance photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, and Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, to name but a few.
Ashton-Cirillo's video message has not gone unnoticed in Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, highlighted that the statement is further evidence of the US-backed Kiev regime's terrorist activities and promised to send the video in question to various international organizations.