Free Republic

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...

Former Russian commander Igor Girkin has accused Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin of "mutiny" for rejecting an order that would require his notorious paramilitary outfit to sign contracts with Russia's Defense Ministry. "This is an act of mutiny, if you call a spade a spade," Girkin wrote in a Telegram post on Sunday. The Wagner Group has played a critical role in Russia's efforts to seize the industrial town of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern region. Throughout the months-long push to take control of Bakhmut and until the Wagner Group withdrew from the city this month, Prigozhin repeatedly accused Russian Defense...

Russian President Vladimir Putin could "disappear at any moment," sending Moscow into a civil conflict amid its floundering invasion of Ukraine, warned former commander Igor Girkin. Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, rose to prominence for his role in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. He has become increasingly critical of Kremlin leadership as its military struggles to achieve substantial military gains in Ukraine nearly a year after Putin launched the "special military operation." Although he supports the goals of the Russian military, he has recently offered grim assessments of the war for Putin. During a recent discussion, Girkin...

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...

A former Russian commander and prominent military blogger has given another scathing assessment of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in which he described how Vladimir Putin's troops had already been dealt a "strategic defeat" by Ukraine. Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, is an army veteran and former intelligence officer who played a key role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. He is among a number of milbloggers who give candid accounts of Russia's war effort that are far removed from the picture portrayed by Kremlin-backed television channels. On his Telegram...

Ukraine's Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate announced a reward of $100,000 on Saturday for the capture of Igor "Strelkov" Girkin. Girkin is a former Russian FSB agent and a key figure in Russia’s initial occupation of Ukraine in 2014, when he led Kremlin-backed separatists to seize Slovyansk, in the Donetsk Oblast. A former Russian intelligence officer who once boasted he had “pulled the trigger of war” in Ukraine, Girkin served as the leader of the Kremlin’s forces in Slovyansk in the first months of the 2014 conflict. Going by the pseudonym Igor Strelkov (which means “shooter” in Russian). Girkin was...

“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.

The EU's top diplomat has issued a statement expressing sympathy ahead of the day nearly eight years ago that local separatists working with a missile system deployed by Russian intelligence officials are accused of having shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. -snip- Russian suspect Oleg Pulatov, a former officer of the Russian Army, in 2014 headed a unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate in a region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Pulatov was involved in the transport and protection of a Buk antiaircraft missile system that investigators say fired the missile that brought down the...

Russian lieutenant-colonel is accused of shooting dead multiple injured troops on the battlefieldArmy intelligence troops captured by Ukraine say they saw the killings of five of their comradesUkraine has accused Russia of failing to take back its war dead, leaving piles of corpses Ukrainian troops have reached the Russian border to the north of Kharkiv, pushing back Kremlin forcesVideo also shows nuclear-capable Iskander missiles moving towards Finland amid growing NATO rowOne of Putin's top propagandists has declared Russia's offensive in the Donbas region has failed as incredible pictures show the inside of the steel plant at Azovstal which has been...

Speaking in Crimea on August 14, Vladimir Putin recalled that the peninsula had been the last refuge of the anti-Bolshevik White Russian army in 1920 before it fled Russia, bringing the Russian Civil War to an end. Formerly a site of fratricidal conflict, the Crimea should become a site of “reconciliation between Reds and Whites,” said Putin, a call which paralleled his appeal for an end to the conflict in Ukraine. The Soviet Union collapsed only 22 years ago, so there are still some old Reds floating about, but there certainly aren’t any of the original Whites, the last of...

Where is Igor Strelkov? A day after a separatist news agency reported the notorious rebel commander had been seriously wounded, the news trail has gone largely silent, leaving many to speculate about the true fate of Strelkov and Ukraine's increasingly fractious separatists. [....] Some have interpreted Strelkov's rumored injury as a sign that Moscow, deeply compromised by the MH17 downing, may have recalled him as punishment for his costly blunder.