Chilean-American Blogger Gonzalo Lira Dies in Ukrainian Captivity
Criticizing the Zelensky regime while in Ukraine can mean inviting one’s death. Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean-American blogger who risked his life by calling out the Zelensky regime, has ended up dead in a Ukrainian prison. But the pro-Zelensky media and governments in the west couldn’t care less.
Using his YouTube channel to post commentary critical of the current Ukrainian government, 55-year-old Gonzalo Lira lived in Kharkov, the second largest city in the country and a battle front in the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war. In April of 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arrested Lira briefly but released him while restricting his movement to the bounds of the city. Around the time of his arrest, Lira tweeted a list of names of people who suspiciously died in Ukraine, implying they were the victims of the Zelensky administration.
The brief detention by SBU failed to deter Lira from criticizing the Zelensky administration. In May 2023, he was arrested again in a raid by heavily armed Ukrainian security agents. The government accused him of “producing and distributing materials justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, committed repeatedly.”
In July 2023, Lira posted a long series of tweets sharing his plans of attempting to escape Ukraine and seek political asylum in Hungary. He wrote:
“Either I’ll cross the border and make it to safety, or I’ll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.”
In his tweets, he wrote that he was blocked from calling his attorney or posting bail and also expressed distrust in the US government, saying they will return him to Ukraine:
“And the US State Department would return me too. I’m not a black lesbian druggie, or a transgender grifter. Besides, Victoria Nuland hates my guts, or so I’m told.”
In December 2023, Tucker Carlson reported on Lira’s situation in a Twitter/X video and told that Lira was arrested less than five miles from the Hungarian border. Carlson added that Biden’s State Department and national media are uninterested in Lira’s capture by the Ukrainian government. Carlson interviewed Lira’s father in the video. Gonzalo Lira Sr. told Carlson that his son was arrested by the Zelensky regime just 4 days after he heavily criticized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in his political commentary.
Lira’s death was reported on Friday by mostly conservative news outlets in the United States along with some international sources like Russia Today and GBN. The Post Millennial credited Tucker Carlson with breaking the news of Lira’s death on Twitter/X. Carlson wrote that he got the news from Lira’s father.
GBN wrote that Lira had suggested being a target of personal hatred by Victoria Nuland, who is currently the acting deputy to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and has infamously been involved in the west’s subversive activities in Ukraine for a decade.
Lira suggested that this was because Victoria Nuland – currently the acting deputy to Secretary of State Antony Blinken – hated him personally.
Comments poured in on the news and conservatives critical of the Biden-Zelensky alliance called out the Biden administration for allowing it. Donald Trump Junior took to Twitter/X to call out Zelensky as one of “our foreign welfare recipients” for murdering citizens and journalists.
Independent journalist Kim Iversen wrote that Lira’s only crime was criticizing the war.
Anna Moro wrote that the Biden administration let an American citizen die in a Ukrainian jail for criticizing the local corrupt government.
https://twitter.com/acmtilim/status/1745950533725098196
On the free speech social media site Gab, Dean Herbst wrote that Gonzalo Lira Died in Ukrainian prison after not receiving needed medical care and of alleged torture,
https://gab.com/HerbstDW/posts/111746342495078697
The mainstream media in the west that have previously tried to discredit Lira as a “Putin Puppet” and “far right’s Brittney Griner” is yet to report on Lira’s death.
I was disgusted when I heard about this, but we now know that the Biden regime will not protect journalists who criticize friends of the regime. Right now, the US needs to bring back public executions. And Victoria Nuland needs to be the first.
This notion that Gonzalo Lira’s death is not reported in mainstream media is BS. If you google or ddg Gonzalo Lira you’ll find reports from mainstream media all over the place.
It’s unfortunate what happens to spies in wartime. Certainly Ukraine’s treatment of Russians who were captured or, increasingly, surrendered, is a whole lot more humane than the way Russia treats captured Ukrainians.
Seriously, I don’t get it. Why are you people so eager to defend Russia, whose aim is clearly to destroy freedom around the world? The only thing the Russians know how to do is use goebbelsology to discredit their adversaries in media. They’ve been doing it since long before they worked behind the scenes to put the incompetent Joe McCarthy in charge of anti-Russia investigations. Do you not see that – or do they have kompromat on you?
Probably should have said “liberal” mainstream media. I know people who knew him, he was in no way a spy. But he was irritating as hell to Ukraine and to certain people in our own state department, and of course had no conceptual understanding of the danger he was in. He was told by many that he needed to leave, and he had that opportunity but he didn’t.
But stupidity is not a reason to die in prison, and certain people in our own state department are to blame, if not actually complicit.
Joe/Larry, Stupidity is not a reason to die, but they started the Darwin awards for just these types of actions, and it seems like this guy should be a recipient posthumously. Who would think it was wise to be poking a tiger while riding on its back? Ukraine is fighting a war for its very survival and this dude is publicly criticizing the government while living there? Likely these actions would pass if the country was not at war, but it is. We can only hope that he didn’t have any offspring. (And just for clarity, I do want to point out that the guy you will be voting for in November has stated that all government employees will be required to make a loyalty oath to him-and you folks are wasting your breath criticizing Ukraine over this matter? Please…)
It’s sad when anyone dies prematurely.
This is war, a fight to the death, and war is hell, Ukraine is hell. This guy was spy-accused in Poland, Ukraine, and I am sure we did not like him either. Should of put him on the front line with a white flag so he could ask the Russians to stop.
These are interesting times where emotions rule so a spy for Russia, or a Russian disinformation advocate is emotionally tied to liberals, Biden, the who shebang. Emotions.
Ukraine is easier on people than Russia, by far, and even more than the Israelis. Not to mention us spiriting a few away on the Patriot Act or black-opting a few into third-party foreign-country rendition torture hell. Early on after 9/11, we took one Muslim off the street, no due process, just hidden away as his business crashed based on the allegations of his ex-girlfriend later determined to be lying, upset, revengeful ex girlfriend. Too late, damage done, business gone, life ruined.
War is hell.