Many netizens have reacted sarcastically to the suspension of the Ukrainian military spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo after the 46-year-old posted a video threatening to “hunt down” Russian journalists.
Some X (formerly Twitter) users wrote “good riddance”, while others jokingly claimed that Ashton-Cirillo looks like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a blond wig.
“That should have happened immediately after the hateful speech,” one user wrote in a nod to the spokesperson’s suspension, with another netizen noting, “Transaction closed.”
An X (formerly Twitter) screenshot
© Photo : X/@DissocialSpace
An X (formerly Twitter) screenshot
© Photo : X/@DFBHarvard
An X (formerly Twitter) screenshot
© Photo : X/@NanaWildflowers
An X (formerly Twitter) screenshot
© Photo : X/@VladCraita
An X (formerly Twitter) screenshot
© Photo : X/@CashMon55832121
Another netizen alleged that Zelensky is trying to cover his “full dictatorship tracks by suspending the lunatic spokesman and saying he went rogue.”
“He didn’t. He spoke the message of the Ukrainian government and they underestimated the backlash,” the netizen added.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, for her part, wrote on her Telegram page that she wonders whether Ashton-Cirillo “will now be appointed as the Minister of Preschool Education or the Chief Obstetrician-Gynecologist of Ukraine.”
The developments come after the Ukrainian military announced on Wednesday that it had suspended the US-born spokesperson of the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) over the inappropriate statements.
This followed the Russian Foreign Ministry stating that Moscow will seek an adequate reaction of the relevant international organizations to Kiev's threats targeting Russian journalists.
"The statements by S. Ashton-Cirillo, and other Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their sponsors, serve for the entire world community as irrefutable evidence of the terrorist nature of the bloody Zelensky regime... In turn, we will seek an adequate reaction of the relevant multilateral structures to such outrageous in their cruelty and cynicism attacks of the Kiev regime," the Ministry stressed.
In a video message on X last week, Ashton-Cirillo branded Russian and pro-Russian journalists as "war criminal propagandists" and insisted that they would be "hunted down."
The spokesperson for the Ukrainian military also claimed that, “Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in an uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favored Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes.”