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...

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 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...

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...

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...

“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.

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...

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...

The man who Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) wants most in eastern Ukraine, alleged Russian Military Intelligence Colonel Igor Strelkov, has emerged beyond command-and-control recordings to give a news conference in the restive city of Sloviansk on April 26, reported Life News, a Russian media outlet. Video footage shows him dressed in military fatigue with a Saint George ribbon tied to his left arm as the self-proclaimed commander of the “Donbass People’s Militia.” Sitting beside Denis Pushilin, who calls him the chairman of “People’s Republic of Donbass,” the Russian acknowledged that the SBU on April 25 had detained self-proclaimed Sloviansk Deputy...