A transgender American woman serving in the Ukrainian military has spoken about her unique experience in a tell-all interview over the weekend – weeks after sustaining a permanent injury from a Russian artillery strike.
An American journalist and war correspondent, 45-year-old Sarah Ashton-Cirillo described how she’s combated the Kremlin for more than a year as an honored guest at Yankee Stadium Saturday – while in the US briefly for her son’s graduation.
The native New Yorker joined Zelensky‘s war effort shortly after its outset last year, and has since spent her time sleeping in the trenches of the war-torn nation, befriending fellow servicemen and moving crucial supplies along the way.
Already laying witness to countless casualties, Ashton-Cirillo got her first taste of action in February, shortly after being transferred to the front line at her own request as part of a combat unit.
That put a rifle in rifle in her hands but also put her in the path of a wayward artillery shell in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region on February 23. Hit in her head and right hand, she was hospitalized for 16 days, and immediately returned to the front.
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An American journalist and war correspondent, 45-year-old Sarah Ashton-Cirillo described how she’s combated the Kremlin for more than a year Saturday
A transgender woman serving in the Ukrainian military, she spoke about her unique experience in a tell-all interview over the weekend – weeks after sustaining a permanent injury from a Russian artillery strike
Speaking to The New York Post from a private box at the ballpark Saturday – as a guest of team president Randy Levine’s wife – Ashton-Cirillo described what it’s like to be a full-fledged member of the Ukrainian armed forces – and how she has come on the radar of Moscow in the process.
‘No foreigner has spent more time in the Russian border zone than I have,’ said Ashton-Cirillo, who traded her title of war correspondent for progressive publication LGBTQ Nation to combat specialist back on January 31.
‘With my experience working as a civilian for them – and I was doing a lot of analysis – and it made sense.
‘The decision was made that I would enlist.’
Attending as a guest of the Yankees’ Universe Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research, Ashton-Cirillo said that within days she found herself wrapped up in the fighting – and soon saw her face plastered on Russian state TV.
‘I transferred on January 31 and on February 2, I was fighting,’ she said, offering up her unique story that she has also documented in-depth on social media.
‘The Russians put me on Russian television all the time,’ she added. ‘They always focus on calling me “it.”‘
Now a junior sergeant with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Brigade, she is set to return to the war this month, following a 12-day visit stateside that will also see her speak with politicians in Washington.
Initially a freelancer without a combat helmet or even a firearm, Ashton-Cirillo said she decided to take up arms after she witnessed bombings and rockets kill civilians in cities like Kharkiv and Zolochiv, deep within the war zone.
The nighttime attack damaged the nerves and muscles in her right hand, and left a hole in her cheek and lip. She also said the close call came as a harsh wake-up call – one that she had not been subjected to during her previous 11 months in the country as a freelance war reporter
She has since shared photos, videos and dispatches in real time of cratered buildings and dystopian landscapes, holed up in the litany of bomb shelters and and manmade pits littering the countryside.
She described seeing combat for the first time in February after her unit was hit with a Russian shell strike while stationed on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
The nighttime attack damaged the nerves and muscles in her right hand, and left a hole in her cheek and lip. She also said the close call came as a harsh wake-up call- one that she had not been subjected to during her previous 11 months in the country.
Just over two weeks – at her own request – she was back on the frontline, but not after taking to Twitter to declare her steadfastness to the Ukrainian cause, as explosions can be heard in the distance.
‘I was hit this morning,’ she wrote in a caption accompanying a video showing a fellow soldier bandaging her hand. ‘My injuries are permanent. I’ve lost part of my hand and have scarring on my face.’
‘They can’t kill us,’ she went on to add, as bombs go off in the background. ‘They can’t hurt us. Victory is ours. It doesn’t f****** matter. Why? Because we’re Ukraine,’
She proceeded to taunt the Russian president, who days earlier promised a Kremlin victory – while potentially sparing outspoken adversary Zelensky.
‘Putin is going to be the one dead,’ said Ashton-Cirillo in a clip that has since been viewed 6.5million times.
‘And this is the small price for liberation and freedom,’ the former freelancer says, before offering a spirited ‘Slava Ukraini!’ – which in English translates to, ‘Glory to Ukraine.’
Despite her different background, Ashton-Cirillo says other soldiers fighting against the occupation have welcomed her with open arms – maintaining to the Post Saturday that she has faced ‘zero’ harassment or reactions since joining up.
‘It’s freedom,’ the woman from Upstate New York told the publication. ‘It doesn’t matter that I’m a trans person, it is irrelevant. I’m first a soldier, second a human being, and everything else comes after that.’
