Ukrainian secret services offer $100,000 for Igor Girkin, a veteran of the Donbas war sentenced to life in prison for the downing of a Malaysian Airlines plane in 2014
The war in the Ukraine contains an infinite variety of characters of the most diverse. One of them is Igor Girkin. A veteran of the Donbas war, during the first months of the invasion he revealed himself as a
fierce critic of the Kremlin’s erratic strategy. Subsequently, last October, images of him near the Ukrainian border were published, fueling speculation about his possible return to the front line at the head of a volunteer militia. Last week his name came to the fore again after being sentenced by the Dutch court to life imprisonment for his role in the downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane in 2014.
But who is Igor Girkin? Also known as Igor Strelkov, he is a veteran of the Army – he has participated in the wars in Chechnya, Transnistria, Bosnia and Donbas – and a former officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB). The European Union has sanctioned him for his involvement in the war in Ukraine. His name became known in 2014. He played a key role in Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and later in the Donbas conflict, in which he led pro-war paramilitary guerrillas. Donetsk People’s Republic.
Girkin himself has openly acknowledged his involvement in the conflict that has been smoldering in eastern Ukraine since 2014, and in which thousands of people have died. “After all, I pulled the trigger to launch the war (in Donbas). If our squad had not crossed the border, in the end everything would have ended like in Kharkiv or Odessa. And I have a personal responsibility for what is happening there.” The quote is taken from an interview that Girkin gave to the newspaper ‘Zavtra’ in November 2014.
Igor Girkin. /
Widely decorated for his military career, Girkin is a fervent Russian nationalist. He believes, for example, in ‘Novorossiya’ (literally New Russia), the name by which eastern Ukraine is known in Russian nationalist circles, who see it as an indivisible part of the Russian empire. In this sense, Girkin belongs to the same elite as Alexander Dugin, one of Putin’s closest ideologues.
However, his fame has suffered ups and downs. In July 2014, Girkin and his troops were forced to leave Sloviansk, a crucial enclave for control of Donbas. They were decimated by the Ukrainian forces, who managed to drive them out. The defeat was received as a humiliation in the Russian nationalist orbit. Some even reproached Girkin for not keeping his word to lose his life defending Sloviansk. He resigned from his post as defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic.
Sentence
Since then, his name has been off the radar. A
research carried out by the journalistic website Bellingcat revealed that he has used a false identity, under the name of Sergéi Runov, to travel around the country for all these years.
Last October, an image of him dressed as a military man was published in the Rostov Oblast, in Russia, on the Azov Sea, near the border with Ukraine. There was speculation about a possible return of the veteran to the war front under the command of a volunteer unit. However, one of the founders of Bellingcat -who has been monitoring his steps-, Christo Grozev, reported a few days ago on German television that Girkin is not in Ukraine. «He does not fight on the Ukrainian front, but he works in the Russian Army. He trains and recruits volunteers for the war,” he stated.
In any case, following the publications, the Ukrainian intelligence services offered a bounty of $100,000 on his head. kyiv considers him one of the most bloodthirsty “terrorists”, both for his role in Donbas and, above all, for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
Just ten days ago a Dutch court found Girkin guilty of the attack. The court found it proven that the device that brought down the plane and killed its 298 passengers was a Russian-made ‘Buk’-type missile that was fired from the Lugansk region of Ukraine in Donbas, then under the control of pro-Russian forces. That is, with Girkin in front.
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