Report: American Journalist Gonzalo Lira Has Died While Imprisoned In Ukraine

WASHINGTON DC (WSAU) – 55-year-old American journalist Gonzalo Lira has reportedly died in a Ukrainian prison after nearly eight months of imprisonment.

According to the Post Millennial, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian security in May 2023 after he was reportedly critical of President Vladimir Zelensky’s handling of the war being fought against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine.

Lira’s comments included claims that Ukraine’s efforts to win the captured territory back have gone nowhere and their people are dying for a war that is already lost.

Lira’s father, Gonzalo Lira Sr., provided a statement on his son’s death to The Grayzone, saying, “I cannot accept the way my son has died. He was tortured, extorted, and incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days, and the US Embassy did nothing to help my son. The responsibility of this tragedy is the dictator Zelensky, with the concurrence of a senile American president, Joe Biden.”

Ukrainian officials stated in a press release when Lira was initially arrested that he was “one of the first to support the Russian invaders and glorify their war crimes.” They stated that he had “engaged in discrediting the top military and political leadership and the defense forces of our state.”

According to the BBC, which spoke to a Ukrainian soldier on the frontlines in December, Lira’s comments appear to have contained some truth, as Russian forces have repelled numerous Ukrainian counter-offensive attempts, which have depleted large portions of their experienced fighting force. The soldier stated the troops feel left behind at this point, saying, “No one knows the goals. Many believe that the command simply abandoned us. The guys believe that our presence has more political than military significance. But we just did our job and didn’t get into strategy.”

When asked by the outlet to describe in detail how bad their manpower shortage has become, the soldier stated, “There are a lot of young guys among us. We need people, but trained people, not the green ones we have there now. There are guys who have spent just three weeks in training and only managed to shoot a few times.”

The BBC reported that the Ukrainian force’s ability to man the frontlines could soon end as over 20,000 men have fled Ukraine since the start of the war, which has led Ukraine to only secure small victories in recent months, which included the recapture of small pieces of territory that were strategically abandoned by Russian forces.

I watched Lira's original videos, "I'm About to Cross the Border", parts 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 on YouTube. I looked at his eyes and could not tell any difference between them. Both his eyes looked the same, no excess redness, no unnatural movements.

As I explained, I already knew that for him to get arrested in Ukraine, he had to return to Ukraine after leaving. Which meant he was not living in Ukriane. For over a year, he lied on his YouTube round tables about living in Kharkiv, lied about life as a direct witness to the war when he was living in the Netherlands, safely in the heart of Europe and NATO. He wasn't living in Moscow or St. Petersburg while pretending to be in Kharkiv. He was living safely in the heart of Europe, away from the war, in the bad countries, not in a good country like Russia, according to Lira's own standards.

Given that, why should anyone trust anything he said?

As for his death, we do not know what kind of care he had. We do know he was in his 50s, overweight, not in good health, a daily smoker, and had pneumonia in both lungs. It does not take a conspiracy to kill a person in that condition. The irony is he died in a country where the civilian infrastructure, including medical care, was getting blown up by Russia, the country whose invasion he was justifying.

If he honored the terms of his first plea bargain and stayed out of Ukraine he would not have been arrested. If he got pneumonia in the Netherlands, he would have had better medical care. Lira's hubris caused his death.

From your link 1/3. at 3 seconds i can visually see the upper eye lid of the left eye is swollen. I agree there is no excess redness in the whites of the eyes.

Compare that to one of his older video. Both eyes are puffed up relative to what they where a few months earlier. Can be contributed to not enough sleep. Though they would be equal in puffiness.

said, "He was living safely in the heart of Europe, away from the war"
Maybe you're right. I liked his way of thinking. I never cared about his location.
Given that: How did the Ukrainian police pick him up at his apartment? I always found strange he was in a country that wanted him dead.

said, "Given that (he wasn't in the Ukraine) why should anyone trust anything he said?"

What information did he give that wasn't in the "news" or available over the net? I always thought he was did commentary. I don't remember any new "facts" he gave.

said, "It does not take a conspiracy to kill a person in that condition (not healthy which i agree.)"
Yes it does. As most of the victims of Covid medical malpractice were old people.

"I always found strange he was in a country that wanted him dead."

The court records for Lira's current case are public records, available online if you know where to look and can translated the Ukrainian. Governments that want to murder people don't arrest them for espionage, give them plea deals and deport them. Then when they return in violation of the plea deal, don't arrest them, post videos on social media, give them court appearances, release them on bail, catch them when they try to skip bail and leave the country, then prosecute them with ICC lawyers watching to make sure the case is prosecuted fairly.

Ukraine did nothing to kill him for two years when according to Lira, they could have if they wanted to and he was such a big problem for that super villain Zelensky. All the talk of Ukraine wanting to kill Lira, was from Lira.

As to why he returned to Ukraine (when before he returned he was pretending to be there all along), who knows? Lira never said why he went back to Ukraine. He did, that was his choice, and he was responsible for it. No one made him go back.

Get it through your head. Lira lied like a normal person breathes. Any time he told a truth was to provide cover for the lies he was telling.

said, "Governments that want to murder people don't arrest them for espionage, give them plea deals and deport them."

Made sense to me. plea deals likely told him he can't be a journalist (can't say anything.) They wanted him to run from the "law" gives them a reason to actually kill him.
Which is why I question why he was in the Ukraine at all when they captured him. That is one thing that never made sense to me.

said, " Lira lied like a normal person breathes."

A couple of points that made since to me.
1. The Ukrainian had no real chance in a conventional war against Russia no matter how many tanks the US sent.
2. Everything that the US did against Russia backfired in our face.
A) Such as the oil pipeline that the US said they would destroy. The backfire. Europe has gone into a political melt down.
B) forcing DTCC to stop transactions with Russia. The backfire now it seems our U.S. Treasuries are forced into massive change (though that seemed so stupid it seemed intentional)

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