Igor Girkin, a Russian who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Netherlands for downing flight MH17 in 2014, is said to have been arrested in Russia. That is what his wife, Miroslava Reginskaja, writes on Girkin’s Telegram channel on Friday. Girkin’s lawyer confirms the news to the newspaper RBKand also a member of the State Duma writes on Telegram that Girkin is being held and that his house has been searched.
According to Reginskaja, her husband has been arrested on suspicion of extremism. She does not know where Girkin is now.
Separatists
Girkin, aka Igor Strelkov, was defense minister of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014, when flight MH17 was downed over Ukraine. In November last year, the court at Schiphol sentenced him and two other pro-Russian separatists to life imprisonment in absentia. Because of their role in the delivery and removal of the Boek missile installation that shot the plane out of the air, the court holds the three responsible for the deaths of all 298 people on board. The three men must also jointly pay an amount of 16 million euros to the surviving relatives.
At the end of last year, Girkin is said to have briefly fought in Ukraine with a Russian volunteer battalion, although he has never made a secret of his despise for Vladimir Putin’s corrupt authoritarian regime. On social media such as YouTube and Telegram, he developed into a major critic of the Russian army command.
This year he and other right-wing nationalists formed the so-called Club of the Angry Patriots, which calls for even tougher action against Ukraine, because losing Russia as a nation is in danger. “All for the front, all for victory, glory for Russia!” reads the club’s slogan.
First war in Transnistria
In 1992, Girkin volunteered for his first war, in Transnistria. Then he fought in Bosnia and in the Chechen wars. According to the Russian human rights organization Memorial, he may have been involved in the disappearance of four Chechen citizens in 2001. He himself says he does not know how many people died at his hand.
The dead don’t keep Girkin awake. In his world, the clock has turned back to tsarist Russia of the nineteenth century, where war was about honor and eternal glory was achieved on the battlefield. In the world of Igor Girkin, there is no place for the contemporary Ukrainian nation-state. According to him, Ukrainians are in fact Russians, and the south and the east of Ukraine belong to Moscow.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on July 22, 2023.