On July 21, he was arrested in Moscow Igor “Strelkov” Girkina former FSB officer, one of the most prominent participants in the Conflict in Donbass in 2014 and head of the so-called “Angry Patriots“: a national-patriotic movement of extreme right which invites an even more radical war. In addition, Strelkov is a popular war blogger with almost 900,000 readers. He was arrested appeals to extremism: despite the support of war in Ukraineregularly and harshly criticizes the country’s military leadership and personally Wladimir Putin. Strelkov’s arrest provoked a strong public reaction and even became “a turning point in the political history of this war”.
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This is the first time since the war began that the Russian authorities have not arrested anyone liberal opponentbut an important one pro-war activist. Although recently the Kremlin She is becoming more and more actively involved in the agenda of the “patriots”, which until now has practically not restricted her. Sun, beginning of July, le security forces They sabotaged Strelkov’s public speech in a bookstore St Pietroburgoand a little later they opened a case for “discrediting” the army against their close ally, the retired colonel of the GRU Vladimir Kvachkov. Kvachkov regularly participated in Strelkov’s streams, where he criticized political leadership and the Russian military for the way war is waged. Such a pressure right guide could indicate that al Kremlin They revised the unspoken rule that allowed me to Z blogger criticize the authorities. But Strelkov was considered untouchable for many years thanks to his service in the FSB and his “merits” in the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. During the year and a half of the war, the country’s most important patriot allowed himself to utter many more “false” and “discrediting” statements than he did liberal opponents who also received 7-8 years in prison for these crimes.
After the failed uprising of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the situation has changed. As many observers note, the old system no longer works. “Strelkov, of course, has long since crossed all sorts of red lines, and the security forces (from the FSB to the military commander) were desperate to arrest him,” writes the independent political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya. “One of the consequences of Prigozhin’s rebellion is that the army now has more Political force to suppress his opponents.” In addition, Strelkov – in the words of the Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkowski “He could never prove his neediness in the Kremlin” – he really raised the bar of criticism. THE “Turbo Patriots” Extremely disappointed with the mild response of the authorities and the President to Prigozhin’s rebellion, they began to express themselves much more aggressively. Strelkov continued to personally criticize Putin, whom he had previously tried not to touch.
Because of this, even military correspondents reacted coolly to the news of his arrest. “Take a cheeky bite politico-military vertical “At a time when it is not a good idea to oppose the entire collective West,” wrote one of Russia’s most famous Z-channels: horde. In general, the reaction of pro-war advocates is to admit that Strelkov got into trouble himself, so it would be strange even if they hadn’t come to get him. Despite the fact that Strelkov also came into sharp conflict with Prigozhin in the public sphere, and the denunciation on the basis of which he was arrested was written by a member of Wagner, experts suggest that Strelkov’s arrest should be considered not just a kind of arrest Settlement of private accounts.
Rather, it is a response to a protracted criticism from the right that can no longer be accepted. “Putin lost ground after the Prigozhin rebellion, so he needs measures that make him strong,” says the political scientist and political strategist Abbas Gallyamov Broadcast on the Russian opposition channel dozhd. Galliamov believes that Putin is taking strategically detrimental measures to show strength. To pressure the patriots, on whom the Russian government relies in many ways, on the eve of the 2024 election is to push them into opposition with your own hands.
Even the Russian political technologist Konstantin Kalachev remembers the upcoming presidential elections, but sees the pressure on Strelkov as part of it election campaign: “Now we can talk well or nothing about Putin!” Now a political scientist and Senior Research Fellow at University College London Vladimir Pastukhov asks the question: “Okay, now they will crush Strelkov like a bug. But what to do with the thoughts he transmitted? There is only one reason for this arrest: Strelkov’s ideas are enjoying increasing popularity among supporters of the regime, particularly in military and police circles.”
The opposition blogger StalinGulag believes that the main problem now is not why Strelkov was arrested. The big question now is “Who’s next?”. Next up is another “angry patriot,” an ally of Strelkov and a former Duma deputy Viktor Alksnis. He defines what happened as “an attempt to silence the patriotic opposition” lest anyone dare deny “that victory is imminent.” At the same time, the former MP openly admits that there are no legal ways to protect Strelkov in Russia: “You can’t count on objective investigations or courts.” That is the bitter irony of Russian politics: eat up all the “damned liberals” who machine of oppression It has turned against loyalists who support the war but believe the Kremlin is doing it wrong.
Today, like liberal opponents once, they face the imprisonment of their leader on implausible grounds and the threat of a long prison sentence (Strelkov faces up to five years in prison). illegal detentions by protesters and those who came to support the accused. Before the Court Several people were arrested, including one of the leaders of the Donbass “separatists” and Strelkov’s ally. Pavel Gubarev. Now he is also being investigated for extremism.
The Angry Patriots Club has already launched a public campaign in defense of political prisoner Strelkov and a hashtag #freestrelkovto all devotees of achingly familiar Alexei Navalny. “Igor Ivanovich [Strelkov] openly and appropriately criticized the actions of government officials and the freedom of the word The report provided by the state testified that the country’s leadership is complying with the regulations Constitution. Today, trust in it is undermined: we see that in our country there are processes underway that testify to the alienation of the representatives of power from fundamental values,” Strelkov’s associates write reluctantly, defining as “out-of-scale cynicism” the selective oppression of the system that “releases criminals and jails patriots.” “Did you mess up?” they get angry.
The liberal opposition cannot help but rejoice that such enlightenment reigns in the ranks of the gods supporters of the war. “The repression of ‘patriots’ will change the attitude of this public towards Putin,” writes Gallyamov. “Hey, they will say, it shows the opposition was right. Putin really turned out to be one bully It is a dictator. He thinks not so much about the motherland as about his throne. Declares a person an ‘extremist’ for telling the truth.” Indeed, under the news of Strelkov’s arrest on Telegram, one can increasingly see comments like this: “To be honest, this is bad news. Apparently, Russia could become a dictatorship.”