"I'M ALIVE"....FORMER CANADIAN FORCES SNIPER DEBUNKS RUMOURS OF HIS DEATH IN UKRAINE

BY Chandrayee Roy Choudhury, Canada:

A former Canadian Armed Forces sniper now fighting Russian forces in Ukraine says he was the last to learn of his own death.

The former CAF member — who goes by the nom de guerre Wali — he returned to a safe location in Ukraine Monday after a week spent battling Russian forces on the front lines in the Kyiv region. When he turned on his phone, he discovered hundreds of urgent messages from people convinced he'd been killed in action.

His wife, father, friends and total strangers sent frantic messages trying to confirm he was still alive. His former commander in Kurdistan, who fought with Wali against ISIS, sent a note saying the community sacrificed a sheep in his honour

Misinformation about Wali's record has been circulating online for weeks — including claims that he was the deadliest sniper in the world and held a record for the longest-distance kill shot. Posts on VKontakte, a Russian social media site now known as VK, claimed that Wali had been killed by Russian special forces 20 minutes after he arrived in Mariupol, the southern port city that has been under siege by Russian forces.