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An American journalist goes missing in Ukraine. The silence is deafening

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Gonzalo Lira’s disappearance should have triggered outrage and calls for an investigation by the “freedom-loving” US government and media

By Scott Ritter
My personal journey into the drama-infused existence of Gonzalo Lira began in mid-February 2022, when I appeared as part of a panel discussion organized by Joe Lauria of Consortium News (CN), which included the British writer Alexander Mercouris.
It was just prior to the Russian “special military operation” kicking off in Ukraine. Alexander and I subsequently appeared on several CN-hosted panels to discuss the war in Ukraine, and in conversations following the broadcast he mentioned a fellow he called “Gonzo Lira” and asked if I followed him. I indicated that I did not, and Alexander replied that I should, as “Gonzo” resided in Kharkov, and had some first-hand insights into the conflict that I might find interesting. Alexander asked if he could forward my contact information to Gonzo Lira, and I agreed.
I must admit that I did not follow up on Alexander’s recommendation to follow Gonzo and had forgotten about our conversation about Mr. Lira when, sometime in late March, I was suddenly contacted by the man himself, who asked if I would agree to be interviewed by him for his YouTube channel. I did a quick Google search, and read several items about Gonzalo Lira, AKA Coach Red Pill, including a particularly unflattering article written by Mark Hay of The Daily Beast. I quickly decided that if Gonzo was making The Daily Beast uncomfortable, then I was more than happy to be interviewed by him.
The setup for the interview, which took place on March 30, was informative in its own right. Alexander’s colleague Alex Christoforou was providing technical assistance, and because of connectivity issues due to Gonzalo broadcasting from Kharkov (literally a war zone), the YouTube platform could not be accessed, and instead we shifted to Twitter Spaces (a somewhat ironic choice, given my later permanent suspension).
But the most interesting aspect of the pre-interview technical discussions was a to-and-fro between Gonzalo and Mr. Christoforou about Mr. Lira’s safety. Beyond the obvious reality of broadcasting from a city under attack (air-raid sirens were sounding in the background during this time), Gonzalo expressed a clear concern that he was being sought out by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). I opined that perhaps broadcasting from Kharkov might not be the wisest decision under these circumstances, a concern echoed by Mr. Christoforou, but this was dismissed by Gonzalo. “I’m taking precautions,” he said, without further elaboration.
The Twitter Spaces session was enjoyable, with Gonzalo asking relevant questions and, in the true spirit of the journalist/interviewer, allowed me to answer without any undue commentary from his end something so-called “professional” journalists in the mainstream media should do more often. According to Mr. Lira, it was “well received” by his followers.
Gonzo reached out to me again, on April 11, for a follow-up interview on his YouTube channel. This time, Mr. Christoforou was successful in surmounting the technical challenges surrounding Mr. Lira’s geographical realities, and the interview went off without a hitch. When we finished, Gonzo thanked me, and in the subsequent conversation, he relayed his concerns that the authorities in Kiev were not only displeased with what he had to say but were actively looking for him.
Gonzo’s pinned Tweet from March 26, in which he listed the names of eight Ukrainian politicians, journalists, dissidents, and human rights figures who had either been killed, arrested, or gone missing since the war with Russia had broken out, jumped out at me. The idea of having just completed a live-streamed interview lasting more some 77 minutes at a time when the Ukrainian SBU, which undoubtedly possesses considerable cyber skills sufficient to geolocate a lengthy online presence such as the YouTube broadcast we had just finished, bothered me especially in light of Gonzo’s own self-expressed concerns, and I said as much.
Gonzalo Lira was fatalistic about his future. “I know the risks,” he said. “And I take precautions.”
Gonzo’s last tweet was posted on his account (@realGonzaloLira, 54,400 followers) at 7.07am on April 15, 2022. “New Patrick Lancaster,” he wrote, referring to a US Navy veteran-turned war correspondent who has been actively reporting from the frontlines in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. “Must watch.”
“Only the guilty fear judgement,” Gonzo had written in his Twitter bio. “Only liars need stifle the truth.”
Gonzo posted Mr. Lancaster’s report on his Telegram account (over 89,000 subscribers) at 7.16am. The post has more than 130,000 views at the time of writing.
“Here I talk about whatever’s on my mind,” Gonzalo noted in his Telegram introduction. “Unvaxed – and if that makes you angry and makes you hope that I die soon, I want you to know that I have no such wish for you.”
No soldier believes that he or she will be shot until the bullet strikes home. And no political dissident or free speech advocate believes he or she will be silenced until the knock comes at their door.
I received a telephone call on Sunday, April 17 from a producer for George Galloway’s The Mother of all Talk Shows (MOAT). Gonzalo Lira was scheduled to appear as a guest, and he had gone missing. George wanted to know if I had heard from Gonzalo. Sadly, I had not.
On the same day, Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy, writing for The Grayzone, published an article titled “‘One less traitor’: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition” which, in light of Gonzalo’s disappearance, was not only timely but deeply disturbing.
Citing war-time necessity, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared martial law and banned all real opposition parties (the neo-Nazi parties and organizations, however, remained untouched.) “The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response,” Zelensky stated.
“As he wiped out his opposition,” Blumenthal and Krishnaswamy wrote, “Zelensky ordered an unprecedented domestic propaganda initiative to nationalize all television news broadcasting and combine all channels into a single 24-hour channel called ‘United News’ to ‘tell the truth about war.’”
The order directing this action was signed on March 18, 2022.
Zelensky, The Greyzone authors noted, had ominously warned that “there would be consequences for collaborators.”
And now Gonzo Lira had gone missing.
On April 19-20, Twitter user @Anabel_Villeroy posted a series of tweets compiling evidence that “Azov SU @botsmanua (i.e., Sergei ‘Boatswain’ Korotkikh) identified Serhiy Velychko, call sign ‘Chilli’, as Gonzalo Lira’s kidnapper.”
Korotkikh is a notorious member of the Azov Battalion who recently posted a video showing his men committing atrocities in Bucha on April 1, 2022.
According to the @Anabel_Villeroy Twitter account, Velychko was the commander of the “Azov Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion (a.k.a. KRAKEN unit) in Kharkov.” The tweet contained a number of screenshots from the @botsmanua account (which has since been removed from Twitter) bragging about the capture, possibly even death, of Gonzalo Lira.
Recognizing that this information did not constitute anything remotely resembling verified fact but enraged at the audacity of persons proclaiming to be affiliated with the Azov organization gloating about the death of Mr. Lira, I took to Facebook to give voice to my outrage.
“When Belarusian authorities,” I wrote, “pulled Roman Protasevich, a blogger who had served a combat tour in the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion before working for Radio Free Europe’s Belarus channel out of Prague, off an airplane in May 2021 on charges of inciting political opposition (roughly the equivalent of sedition), the world went crazy, accusing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of trampling on free speech. Protasevich is alive and well, living under house arrest while awaiting trial.”
However, when reports emerged that Gonzo Lira, a California-born social media “influencer” who resided in Kharkov, Ukraine, and who published online content critical of the Ukrainian government, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by the Kraken Unit, part of the Azov Battalion affiliated with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), the West kept silent.
Free speech isn’t a one-way street. To remain silent in the murder of Gonzo Lira is to be complicit in his possible death, and the deaths of all journalists who pursue the truth, even if it runs counter to the mainstream narrative. Critical thinking should not be a death sentence. Unfortunately for Gonzo Lira, it seems it was.
The internet being the internet, my post was immediately cited as my “confirmation” that Gonzalo Lira had, in fact, been kidnapped and murdered by the SBU. I quickly sent out a follow-on post to correct the record.
“A point of clarification,” I wrote, “I have no direct evidence that Gonzalo has been killed. I was clear I was referring to ‘reports emerging’ about his demise. But Gonzo said any disappearance of more than 12 hours should be treated as if something bad had happened to him. It’s been five days. If this had been a New York Times reporter disappearing in Russian-controlled territory, it would be headline news especially if a Chechen ‘hunter killer’ team had taken credit for his death. But with Gonzo silence. Which was the whole purpose of the post: To raise awareness about his disappearance.”
There is an increasing outcry from independent media about Mr. Lira’s disappearance, and the Chilean government (Lira was a dual citizen of the US and Chile) has stated that it has been in touch with the “relevant entities” in Ukraine about Gonzalo’s disappearance.
But there is a shocking silence in the mainstream media. One only need recall the justified outcry in 2018 over the disappearance and murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist critical of his government who worked for the Washington Post, to see the double standards. As Mark Crispen Miller, a New York-based academic and media critic, noted in his Substack, “Whatever they think, those of us who still have democratic principles, including a belief that journalists (and that means not just “credentialed” members of the press, but anyone who seeks out, and reports, the news) should not be snatched and killed for what they tell us, must see Gonzalo Lira’s disappearance… as a bad sign for all of us.”
That the US government has not demanded that President Zelensky launch an immediate investigation into the fate of Gonzalo Lira is a travesty. That the mayor of Kharkov, Igor Terekhov, whose approval would be required for any SBU operation targeting Mr. Lira, hasn’t been called out by name by the collective of journalists, American and foreign alike, to account for the actions of Sergey Velichko and the Kraken Unit, is hypocrisy in its highest form especially given the insistence by these same entities for similar investigations into allegations of the suppression of journalistic free speech in Russia.
“What would things have been like if every security operative,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his epic work, The Gulag Archipelago, “when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?”
What Solzhenitsyn called “the cursed machine” would have “ground to a halt,” he believed, “if…if…”
But there was no resistance. “We didn’t love freedom enough,” Solzhenitsyn lamented. “And even more we had no awareness of the real situation. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
We can’t ambush those who took Gonzalo Lira in the staircase of his Kharkov apartment. But we can call out Zelensky’s “cursed machine” for the crimes it is committing every day in defense of a perverted vision of Ukrainian nationalism that has mainstreamed the odious ideology of Nazi Germany, giving voice to its hate-filled logic, and empowering its minions to silence the voices of those who, like Gonzalo Lira, dared speak truth to power.
Don’t remain silent in the face of the ongoing collective effort to silence dissent. Become the “ambush in the stairwell.” Otherwise, free speech and the ideas manifested in that concept will die, and there will be no one left with the moral capacity to mourn its loss.
And we will have deserved everything that subsequently transpires.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991 to 1998 served as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq. Mr Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

Ethiopia beat South Africa in FIFA Women’s World Cup qualification

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An emphatic first leg away victory in Johannesburg, Ethiopian Women U-17 national team has boosted their quest for FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. “We have not yet finished business because a tricky return home leg is due to take place the coming weekend” Coach Endalekachew Chaka suggested.
Back from an away goal aggregate victory over Uganda in the second round qualification matches, Ethiopia thrashed their South African counterpart 3-0 at Wits Stadium in the match played in the third round.
The hosts made a bright start to the game but could not convert their chances in the early stages before Eyerus Tulu broke the deadlock in the 15th minute after profiting from South Africa keeper Kgomotso Musimango’s blunder.
Though the home side appeared to take the upper hand back from the dressing room, the visitors so determined to finish the job at hand pushed for more and that were rewarded with the second of the match through Emush Dandamo two minutes to the hour mark.
On the brink of full time, coming from the bench Kumneger Kebede made up for her earlier miss to notch a third of the match for the visitors.
The win guaranteed a massive lead ahead of the second leg in Addis Ababa on May 1. Bhubaneswar, Goa and Navi Mumbai are the host cities for the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup with the draw to be held on 24th June in Zurich.

Ethiopian Mosenet sets Seoul Marathon new course record

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Mosinet Geremew and Joan Chelimo both broke the course records to triumph at the Seoul Marathon, a World Athletics Elite Platinum Label road race. Sutume Assefa finished runner-up in the women’s version.
Ethiopia’s world silver medalist Geremew saw off the challenge of his compatriot Herpasa Negasa and Brazil’s Daniel do Nascimento to win the men’s race in 2:04:43.
Geremew and Negasa made a move and looked to be leaving Do Nascimento behind, with a six-second gap.But Do Nascimento wasn’t giving up and rejoined the leaders to trail by just a few strides as 40km was passed in 1:58:27.
It was London and Chicago runner-up Geremew who was strongest in the closing stages and he held off his challengers to return to winning ways after being unable to finish the Tokyo Marathon earlier this year.
Negasa, who was second in Dubai in 2019, claimed another runner-up spot in 2:04:49, while Do Nascimento finished third.
In the women’s race, Melly – who has a half marathon best of 1:05:04 and was contesting her fourth marathon – was among the nine runners who passed 5km in 16:40 and 10km in 32:58. The lead group was down to six at 15km (49:30) and Melly had broken away with 2019 Beijing Marathon winner Sutume Assefa.
Melly and Sutume had broken away by 40km, passed in 1:12:16, with Melly eventually striding away to win by eight seconds, 2:18:04 to 2:18:12, and record an almost three-minute PB.
Seven years after her victory in Seoul, Ethiopia’s Guteni Shone finished fifth in 2:28:05.

African Footballer Punished For Unpaid Wages Rant

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An African player has received strong punishment from his club after claiming that all his teammates can think of is the wages they are owed.
It was confirmed that Al Masry striker Amr Marei has been fined 1 million EGP (R798 000) after recently taking aim at the club’s hierarchy following his team’s 2-1 win over RS Berkane in the CAF Confederation Cup.
Speaking after the game, the forward candidly claimed that the Greens’ board is becoming notorious for their un-kept assurances and that he and his colleagues have not been paid in three months.
“We are never paid on time, and we just can’t focus on football while thinking about unpaid wages,” Marei told ONTime Sports.
“Nothing improves despite the club board promises. Everybody knows about the club’s problems but the board must stand by the players.
“We do have faith in the board of directors but we are losing it with time.
“It’s been three months now, we are doing all we can but I want to live like a football player.
“I hope that one day I can go into a game only thinking about football, all we talk about now is our unpaid wages.”
Marei’s remarks were not received well by those in the Al Masry boardroom, who responded to his comments with an official statement in which they announced the monetary fine imposed on the player.
“Al Masry board of directors led by Samir Halabeya decided to impose a fine of 1 000 000 EGP on football team striker Amr Marei,” it read.
“The player will also be under investigation due to his comments after the RS Berkane game which we won 2-1.”
The two-time Egypt international joined Al Masry in 2021 from Pyramids, and has since contributed to four goals in 15 matches so far this season.