United States State Department spokesman Matthew Miller refused to provide further comment on the arrest of a U.S. citizen residing in Ukraine by the Ukrainian government.
Miller was answering questions from reporters on the war between Russia and Ukraine during a May 25 news briefing when Epoch Times reporter Liam Cosgrove raised the question of the arrested U.S. citizen.
The apprehended individual appears to be writer and YouTube commentator Gonzalo Lira who was residing in Kharkiv, Ukraine, at the time of his arrest, according to reporting from The Post Millennial.
“A U.S. citizen who is residing in Ukraine has been arrested and… he was a California-born man… He was an outspoken critic of Zelenskyy’s regime,” Cosgrove began, according to a video from the briefing.
American arrested in Ukraine for speech crimes…
Biden Regime’s State Department won’t commit to helping him. pic.twitter.com/IbI1r0Sfcq
— Red Voice Media (@redvoicenews) May 29, 2023
“The Ukrainian SBU released a press release saying he was arrested for justifying Putin’s invasion. So ultimately, it added up to speech,” the reporter continued.
“And I spoke with Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat, and he said he urges the State Department to engage its authorities to work out some sort of negotiation to get him released. So, are you aware of this? How do we feel about our allies detaining U.S. citizens for speech abroad?” Cosgrove asked.
Miller replied, saying that the State Department was aware of reports of Gonzalo’s arrest. “We obviously support the exercise of freedom of speech anywhere in the world, and I’ll leave it at that,” Miller said.
When Cosgrove pressed Miller to provide more details, asking if the State Department was working on getting Lira released, Miller responded, “I’m going to leave my comments where I just left them,” and called upon another journalist.
Ukraine’s equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announced on May 5 that it had arrested “a foreign blogger who publicly justified the armed aggression of the Russian Federation and spread fakes about the war in Ukraine” in Kharkiv.
The agency’s social media post on Telegram accused Lira of being “one of the first to support the Russian invaders and glorify their war crimes” and of being involved in “discrediting” Ukraine’s political and military leadership.
Lira was a former contributor at the Insider.
Born in Santiago, Chile, Lira was a novelist and scriptwriter, having written several works in Spanish, according to his biography on the site.
Lira has previously been a dating coach with the brand name “Coach Red Pill” and has been living in Ukraine for a while, according to reporting from The Daily Beast.
He is a dual citizen of Chile and the United States, the newspaper reported.
According to the outlet, Lira has been critical of the Ukrainian position in the war and supportive of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
He promoted claims of bio-labs in Ukraine and hailed Russia’s invasion as “one of the most brilliant invasions in military history,” The Daily Beast reported.
Lira had also criticized American reporters covering Ukraine, calling them “system pig journalists” and releasing footage of U.S. journalists eating at their hotel, the outlet reported.
“This justice has been a long time coming,” said U.S. journalist Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, who is now a volunteer in the Ukrainian army.
“His arrest this week shows that Ukrainian officials don’t bow to popular pressure when a factual investigation leads to the truth,” Ashton-Cirillo continued.
Ashton-Cirillo will be a witness in the case. “I’ve already given my sworn statement to SBU about Gonzalo Lira several months ago and expect to be called as a witness in his prosecution,” Ashton-Cirillo added, according to The Daily Beast.
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