Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin (Russian: И́горь Все́володович Ги́ркин) also known by the alias Igor Ivanovich Strelkov (Russian: И́горь Ива́нович Стрелко́в) is a Russian army veteran and former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who played a key role in the Russian annexation of Crimea, and then in the Donbas War as an organizer of militant groups in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR)
Girkin was born in Moscow in 1970.
during the 1990s, Girkin wrote for the right-wing Russian newspaper Zavtra, which is run by the anti-Semitic Russian nationalist Alexander Prokhanov.
Girkin was one of the commanders in Russia's annexation of Crimea, which immediately followed the revolution. In an interview on 22 January 2015, he explained that Russian media falsely portrayed Crimeans as supporting the annexation; Girkin said a majority of the local administration, law enforcement and army were opposed to it.
Girkin said that the head of the newly-installed Russian government in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, asked him to deal with the Donbas provinces of eastern Ukraine
On 12 April 2014, Girkin led a fifty-strong unit of heavily-armed Russian militants who captured the strategic town of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. They attacked and occupied the town's administration building, police station, and Security Service building, and set up roadblocks.
The unit were mostly Russian Armed Forces 'volunteers' from Russian-occupied Crimea and wore no insignia