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While Moscow hails him for being an efficient mediator, Kyiv insists that Lukin sent the order to militiamen in Sloviansk from their Russian bosses. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) released a transcript of an intercepted telephone conversation between Lukin and Igor Strelkov, head of the pro-Russian self-defense of Sloviansk. According to the SBU, Strelkov’s real name is Igor Girkin, a Russian national and colonel of Russian Military Intelligence. “I’m in Donetsk right now, in good company… You do sort of have a general idea about the task that I’ve been given, don’t you?” Lukin said. “Yes, I know, I’ve been warned…...

Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said on Sunday he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be "sham" with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin's military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his...

An outspoken pro-war blogger who has fiercely criticised Russia's military strategy in Ukraine has said he wants to challenge Vladimir Putin in next March's presidential elections. Igor Girkin, 52, led pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014, following Moscow's annexation of the southern Crimea peninsula. Girkin is in jail awaiting trial for extremism, which he denies. He said he wanted to disrupt the "sham" poll with the winner already known. This comment is widely seen in Russia as a reference to President Putin, who is yet to publicly declare that he will run again. In a letter to supporters published...

Russian warlord Igor Girkin has been arrested after branding Vladimir Putin a "useless coward". The commander turned military blogger has repeatedly criticised the tyrant - and warned the country would not survive another term under him. Girkin has also been outspoken about the failures of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. At least eight Russian top brass have been detained or suspended in a mass purge as Putin's defence chief roots out the "bad blood" in the Kremlin. And Girkin's wife Miroslava Reginskaya today announced on Telegram he had been detained on charges of "extremism". She wrote: "Today, at about 11:30, representatives...

Former Russian commander Igor Girkin knocked the "strategic senselessness" of Russia's claimed Bakhmut victory on Saturday. Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, a paramilitary unit, said his troops took full control of Bakhmut on Saturday following months of fighting over the Donetsk city. His claims, which could not be independently verified, were dismissed by Ukraine. Bakhmut has emerged as a major focal point in the Russia-Ukraine war, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin last February, as both sides have engaged in intense, bloody fighting over the city. As Prigozhin celebrated the alleged victory, Girkin took to Telegram to question...

Former Russian commander Igor Girkin floated a "civil war" as a potential solution to Moscow's struggling invasion of Ukraine in a new Telegram post slamming Kremlin military leadership. Girkin's latest remarks come more than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Although Putin initially hoped for a quick victory over Kyiv, which has a smaller military than Russia, Ukraine responded with a stronger-than-anticipated defense effort that has been bolstered by Western military aid, blunting Putin's forces. After months of combat, and a lack of clear progress on Russia's side, some Russian...

The Russian military blogger Igor Girkin has issued his latest broadside against how Russian President Vladimir Putin is conducting his invasion of Ukraine. Also known as Igor Strelkov, Girkin is a former Russian intelligence officer who played a major role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. He has given perceptive but unflattering assessments of Russia's military failures in Ukraine and his views on the military shortcomings of Putin and his commanders. In a video posted on his Telegram social media channel on Monday, Girkin told an audience in St. Petersburg how...

“The war in Ukraine will continue until the complete defeat of Russia,” protested Igor Girkin, a far-right nationalist, in a video address to his 430,000 Telegram followers on Monday. “We have already lost, the rest is just a matter of time,” he writes characteristically.

But as Kyiv has moved to surround the last bastions of rebel control, Igor Girkin, known by his nom-de-guerre, Strelkov, or "Shooter," seems to have soured. [....] The self-proclaimed separatist republic of Donetsk is "fully surrounded," Girkin says before tearing into a brigade of pro-Russian Cossacks. "The Cossacks, keeping with tradition, ran," he says while facetiously congratulating them for recent defeats. "They are awaiting new great achievements. The brilliant Donetsk Cossack battle path has been marked by landmark achievements like [their] surrender of Krasnyy Lyman in one day, the surrender without a fight of Poposna, the surrender of Debaltseve, and...

We all know he's lying, but Putin now cannot afford to tell the truth- and 'Igor the Terrible' knows way, way too much Live by the sword - die by the sword: The shady character running eastern Ukraine's pro-Moscow 'rebel' militia built his reputation on patriotism, guile, and cruelty: Igor Girkin -who took the non-de-guerre 'Igor Strelkov or 'Strelok' (shooter in Russian) for his part as a 'volunteer' in the Kremlin's ongoing land-grab in the Donbas- previously served as an FSB (post-1995 KGB) agent right up until March of 2013, held a top military-intelligence post in both Chechen wars, and had...