Almost five years in prison demanded against opponent Igor Guirkine in Russia
Russian prosecutors on Thursday called for a nearly five-year prison sentence for Igor Girkin, a passionate Russian nationalist and veteran of fighting in Ukraine in 2014 who became a Kremlin critic and was charged with “extremism.”
The former commander of the pro-Russian separatists in Donbas, better known under the pseudonym “Strelkov,” denounced the incompetence of the Russian authorities for months on his widely followed Telegram account. He went further than other Russian nationalists by questioning President Vladimir Putin himself.
“The prosecutor has requested a prison sentence of four years and eleven months against Igor Strelkov,” his supporters announced on Telegram. The entire process took place behind closed doors.
Igor Girkin was arrested in July, a month after the failed uprising of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, another fierce critic of the Russian General Staff who died in what the Kremlin called a plane crash in August.
In one of her last messages before her arrest, Mr. Girkin wrote that Russia was being led by a “loser” and that she could not bear to see this “coward” spend another six years in power. He is being investigated for “extremism,” but at the end of August he announced his candidacy for the presidential election in March.
The 53-year-old rose to prominence in the spring of 2014 when he became the best-known and most influential military leader of the pro-Russian separatists who took up arms in eastern Ukraine.
As a former colonel in the Russian secret service FSB, he organized the first armed militias and ruled the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk with an iron fist. He then served as Defense Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic.