The influential Russian nationalist blogger and former separatist commander in Ukraine Igor Girkin was detained on Friday in Moscow in a case of “extremism” for which he faces five years in prison, after having long criticized the command of the Russian army.
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Since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Mr. Girkin, better known by the pseudonym of Igor Strelkov, regularly denounced the shortcomings of the Russian general staff on his Telegram account, followed by more than 875,000 subscribers.
One of his last messages, published on Tuesday, seemed to attack with virulence, without naming him, President Vladimir Putin. He claimed there that a “shabby” had ruled the country for 23 years and that Russia would not support “six more years of this coward in power”.
After being arrested by the security forces in the morning, Igor Girkin was placed in pre-trial detention for two months renewable by a Moscow court at the end of the afternoon. He is accused of having launched on the Internet “public calls to carry out extremist activities”, a crime punishable by five years in prison.
He appeared in the glass cage reserved for court detainees, motionless and with his arms crossed for long minutes, AFP journalists noted. Outside, a few dozen demonstrators gathered to support him, at least one of whom was arrested.
His lawyer, Alexandre Molokhov indicated that his client intended to appeal his detention, denouncing an “unjustified” judgment, rendered in haste and which did not allow the defense to speak.
According to Mr. Molokhov, justice accuses Mr. Girkin of two publications on social networks in May: one on Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow, the other on supplying the army.
A message published Friday afternoon on his official Telegram account, specifies that he was arrested at his home in Moscow.
Convicted in the Netherlands
Since the abortive rebellion of another virulent critic of the Russian general staff, the leader of the Wagner group Evguéni Prigojine, the experts regularly evoke possible purges within the army and the repression of the last critical voices, in particular military or nationalist bloggers who have become the few in Russia to be able to attack the authorities.
On Telegram, political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya said Friday that Mr. Girkin had “long ago” crossed “all possible red lines” in his criticism of the Kremlin and the army.
“His arrest is of course in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry. This is one of the consequences of the Prigozhin mutiny: the army got more opportunities to repress its adversaries in the public space,” she said.
Igor Girkin, 52, made a name for himself in the spring of 2014 by becoming the most media-friendly, and one of the most influential military leaders of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
A former colonel in the FSB, the Russian intelligence services, he had organized the first armed militias and ruled the separatist bastion of Sloviansk with an iron fist, then occupying the post of Minister of Defense of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk.
In August 2014, he announced his resignation under mysterious conditions, before returning to Russia where he had lost all influence until the Russian offensive on Ukraine, which allowed him to return to grace.
On Telegram, he harshly criticized the way in which the operations of the Russian troops were carried out and predicted the need for a general mobilization, which Moscow refuses, under penalty of Russian “defeat”.
He, however, stayed away from the Wagner Group’s mutiny, condemning it while criticizing the Russian security services for not having anticipated it.
In mid-November 2022, the Dutch courts sentenced him in absentia to life for murder and for having played a role in the destruction, over eastern Ukraine, of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 which had killed 298 people.