A Moscow court has sentenced one of the key figures in Russia's ultranationalist sector, Igor Girkin, known as Strelkov – derived from the Russian word “shooter”, to four years in prison for his criticism of the Kremlin and the high command in the failed state invasion of Ukraine. The former colonel of the Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the paramilitaries who led the Russian invasion that triggered the war in Donbass in 2014, and a recognized Belarusian – a fan of tsarism and the Russian Empire – Strelkov denounced the stagnation The Point of Insult. About the front and the poor conditions of the troops. Judges have also banned him from posting anything online for up to three years after serving his sentence, which includes the seven months he has already been in preventive detention since his arrest in July last year, just a week after the boss's failed rebellion The Wagner mercenary company Yevgeny Prigozhin, another of the most critical voices of the nationalists, served time. “I serve the country,” he said when he learned of his sentence.
Strelkov was arrested even though he had no chance of escaping the country. A Dutch court in November 2022 imposed a life sentence on the soldier for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine in August 2014. All 298 people on board were killed by a Buk anti-aircraft missile supplied to the paramilitaries by Russia. Strelkov, who commanded the separatist forces at the time, said in an interview in 2020 that he felt “morally responsible” for the deaths on the plane, but never gave an explanation for what happened.
Focusing on the defense of Igor Strelkov, this Thursday in Moscow. MAXIM SHIPENKOV (EFE)
Strelkov's criticism of power has continued since the failure of the first offensives against Ukraine, even if the Kremlin's patience was exhausted after the Wagner uprising in June 2023. A month later, the authorities opened a criminal case against Strelkov. Because of his opinion (on Telegram). ) about Crimea and the fact that the military personnel of the 105th and 107th Airborne Regiments do not receive their salaries,” explained his lawyer Gadzhi Aliyev. Among other things, the paramilitary said that the Black Sea peninsula was poorly defended and that the West did not need to negotiate “with the grandfathers of the Kremlin.”
Strelkov is a free verse in the ultranationalist world of Russia. The FSB colonel not only sharply criticized Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Putin for their conduct of the war and their doubts about the country's mobilization. He also had a tough exchange with Wagner's boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, in which he accused him of having carried out a massacre in his own ranks to capture Bakhmut. “I don’t enjoy taking it. “Taking into account what I know about their losses, the wasted resources, the lost time and the strategic nonsense of this operation,” said Girkin, to whom Putin's boss in turn suggested that he should command one of his battalions at the front.
Despite their arguments, Strelkov was shocked to learn of Prigozhin's violent death, just two months after the Kremlin had reportedly forgiven him for his rebellion. “My biggest fear is that instead of the usual punishment they will give me an amnesty, just like they did with the cook,” Girkin said in a letter from prison to the Baza broadcaster.
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Loved and hated in Russian ultra-nationalism, Strelkov wanted to compete with Putin in the presidential election this March. However, the Central Election Committee rejected his registration as a candidate because his team could not produce a document: the signature of Igor Girkin himself, who was previously imprisoned in Moscow's Lefortovo prison.
The Kremlin's fuse in the war in eastern Ukraine
Ten years later, it remains unclear whether the Kremlin ordered the attack on Donbas directly as the anti-Maidan protests subsided or whether it was simply approving the plans of its most ultranationalist sector. In any case, Strelkov led the group that surprised the Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. He barricaded himself there for almost three months and ordered several summary executions. These were the months of shock for the Ukrainian interim government, formed after the escape of President Viktor Yanukovych, between Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in February 2014 and the election of President Petro Poroshenko, who launched a military operation in May of the same year. against the separatists.
A close paramilitary of Strelkov, Yevgeny Skripnik alias Prapor, stated a few weeks ago that Girkin was already planning to take over Ukraine when he was officially a member of the FSB. That is, before the Maidan protests, although the Kremlin has always argued that Donbas was rebelling against an alleged Ukrainian coup.
“As a close friend, I can reveal some secrets: Igor (Girkin) is one of the few who carried out the Novorossiya project (Tsarist name for the southeastern region of Ukraine). This was before 2014, when he was a senior FSB official and had his own network. He planned the annexation of Novorossiya to Transnistria (Moldova),” Prapor explained.
One of the Russian volunteers who joined Strelkov's militias in May 2014, Alexander Shuchkovsky, reported in his book “85 Days of Slavyansk” that the FSB agent initially had the support of the ultranationalist oligarch Konstantin Malofeev; the head Sergei Aksionov, appointed by the Kremlin after the illegal annexation of Crimea; and another dark character, the “political scientist” and current deputy Alexánder Borodái, with whom he shared power in the Donetsk People's Republic in the first months of the war.
Schuchkowsky assures that Vladimir Putin knew about these plans. The volunteer, a witness of those first months, considers “untenable” the version in which a group of armed paramilitaries calmly moved through Russia and crossed the border when security was at its highest after the illegal annexation of Crimea and protests in Donbass.
The longest sentence for a woman in Russia
Russian justice this Thursday also sentenced to 27 years in prison Daria Trépova, the woman who gave a bomb statuette to ultra-nationalist blogger Vladlén Tatarski at an event in a cafe in Saint Petersburg last March. The explosion killed the activist and injured more than fifty people in the area where the perpetrator of the attack herself was staying.
This is the longest sentence for a woman in Russia. The investigation accused Trépova, 26, of collaborating with Ukrainian intelligence services. The inmate convicted of terrorism said during the trial that she was unaware of the presence of explosives in the gift. According to the version that Trépova told the court in Saint Petersburg, the statuette was given to her by Román Popkov, a journalist and former leader of the National Bolshevik Party, which was declared illegal by the Russian authorities.
After the explosion, Trépova called a friend, Dmitri Kasintsev, for help. The court sentenced the young man to one year and nine months in prison for hiding Trépova in his house for several days.
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