2023-07-21 21:17:50
Igor ‘the gunslinger’ (Strelkov in Russian) Girkin was arrested this friday in Russia. A key man in the Russian-controlled Donbas regions for nearly a decade, he had in recent years been a fervent detractor of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, whom he has criticized on several occasions for the management of the offensive in Ukraine. He even went so far as to say that one would have to “hang” the Russian leader for his mistakes in the planning of the Ukrainian front. his wife, Miroslava Reginskaya, and his lawyer, Alexander Molokhov, have pointed out to the Russian media that he was arrested at noon, after security agents will register on domicile.
Reginskaya, Girkin’s wife, posted on her Telegram channel that, although she was not home at the time, she knows from her concierge that at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, representatives of the Research Committee (Russian prosecutor’s office). “They took my husband by the armpits and took him away with unknown direction” she pointed out. Currently, she still does not know the whereabouts of her husband. Molokhov, the lawyer, has confirmed that he is being detained under article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code, which refers to “public calls for extremist activities in means of communication or internet”.
Shot down of MH17
Although the Dutch Prosecutor’s Office considered him one of the culprits of the Shooting down a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane with a BUK missile In 2014, Girkin told EL PERIÓDICO, from the Prensa Ibérica group, that it was not the rebels who shot down the device, suggesting a possible involvement of the Russian regular army in the demolition. “I’ll tell him the same as everyone else; I won’t make any comments and the rebels did not shoot down the plane“He then told this newspaper before suddenly hanging up the call.
According to the Dutch investigation, an anti-aircraft battery of the 53rd Anti-aircraft Brigade of the Russian Army It was then smuggled into Ukrainian territory and returned to Kursk, near the Ukrainian border, when it was confirmed that a civilian plane had been shot down. The Dutch justice sentenced him in absentia a life imprisonmentknowing that it is a sentence that is difficult to comply with, since in Russia it is illegal to extradite Russian citizens.
There were no survivors from the plane, 298 people died in said attack, most of Dutch nationality. Since 2014 Amsterdam has been investigating the incident, together with a team of international investigators. Russia has not been part of the investigation team and has made public different incident hypotheses that do not match each otherwhile blaming the Netherlands for “making totally unfounded accusations”.
In addition to Girkin, other Russian citizens were also convicted of the shooting down, such as Sergei Dubinkinwho was in command of the secret services of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republicy Leonid Kharchenko. This Ukrainian citizen, of pro-Russian ideology, is also linked to the transfer of the weapon to the place of the shot. Both Dubinkin and Kharchenko also received, like Girkin, a life sentence.
Key man in Donbas
Beyond the downing of MH17, Girkin has been one of the biggest names in Crimea and eastern Ukraine for Moscow. In 2014 he would have been part of the contingent of Russian soldiers who took over the peninsula, he even publicly admitted having bound to local politicians to vote in favor of annexation to Russia in the 2014 referendum, something he justified by the lack of support for joining the Russian Federation. Said vote in the eyes of the international community was not neither legal nor legitimate.
His role in the consolidation of Russian interests in eastern Ukraine was also very important. Girkin himself went so far as to say that he participated in the skirmishes that launched the donbas war in 2014, a conflict that for eight years pitted kyiv’s regular army against the self-proclaimed RDonetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
In Donetsk he actively participated in the creation of the local militiasbecoming so important that in the same territory he came to occupy the position of “Minister of Defense“Previously, before the Donbas, he had participated in other conflicts such as the one in Bosnia, Moldova and Chechnya. In 2022, he was open to being part of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and became part of a volunteer battalion. kyiv responded to their presence on Ukrainian soil by placing a price on his head of $100,000.
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