{"id":139080,"date":"2023-03-25T07:05:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-25T11:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=139080"},"modified":"2023-03-25T17:10:37","modified_gmt":"2023-03-25T21:10:37","slug":"stolen-valor-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=139080","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Valor – Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I am sure most of our regular readers knew this was coming.\u00a0 Claims like “There I was knee deep in spent brass and grenade pins fending off those pesky RooSkees” from Valor Vultures on the Global front were inevitable.<\/p>\n

NEWSWEEK<\/a><\/p>\n

A U.S. veteran who drew significant media attention for saying he had volunteered alongside international forces in Ukraine has been accused of misrepresenting himself.<\/p>\n

James Vasquez, a former U.S. soldier\u00a0who routinely uploaded wartime footage\u00a0to his hundreds of thousands of followers on\u00a0Twitter, shared videos appearing to show him facing off\u00a0against Russian forces in Ukraine.\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0was among media that had published articles citing Vasquez’s tweets.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, an American journalist who enlisted to fight in Ukraine’s armed forces, disputed Vasquez’s accounts of combat in the war-torn country.\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0has reached out to Vasquez for comment via LinkedIn message.<\/p>\n

Writing on Twitter, she said Vasquez “is not and has not been” in Ukraine’s armed forces. She provided a link to Vasquez’s Twitter account\u2014where he had previously posted war-related content\u2014which has been deleted as of Thursday morning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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In a series of posts, Ashton-Cirillo said she had “stayed out of it while other soldiers, real soldiers, called him out” to avoid “controversy.” She said she had met Vasquez three times, during each of which he was a “civilian.”<\/p>\n

“It was shocking to see him say he was going on a mission to Soledar after we already left,” she wrote. Soledar, a town in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, was the site of heavy fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces earlier this year before Kyiv’s fighters pulled back to preserve the lives of its personnel, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said at the time.<\/p>\n

In a separate post, also uploaded on Wednesday, Ashton-Cirillo said she had privately communicated with Vasquez, and that he “confirmed to me in writing that he does not and has not had a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Interwebnet Thingy is covered up with claims of fraud and abuse of funds etc concerning Vasquez.\u00a0 \u00a0The guy really was in Ukraine and really did visit the front lines from time to time.\u00a0 Seems like he did raise some money for the cause.<\/p>\n

But, to me he is just like the fake Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, Marine, Air Force PJ etc. that have embellished their career beyond recognition.\u00a0 In the end it helps nobody.\u00a0 \u00a0I get told by people defending frauds that are VFW\/AL Post Commanders, “You have no idea how much good he has done for veterans.”\u00a0 Like that is some kind of valid excuse.<\/p>\n

James Vasquez will end up doing more harm with is embellishments and fraudulent actions than he ever could have done good.\u00a0 Anti-Trump Republican\u00a0Adam Kinzinger seems to have been one of his biggest Fan-Boys so we can expect the usual political vultures to weaponize it their advantage… as if there is one.<\/p>\n

I hereby nominate James Vasquez as the first Official Valor Vulture of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Slava Ukraini<\/p>\n

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  I am sure most of our regular readers knew this was coming.\u00a0 Claims like “There … Stolen Valor – Ukraine<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":654,"featured_media":139083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ukraine","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139084,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139080\/revisions\/139084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/139083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}