Hardline Russian nationalist Igor Girkin was detained and charged with extremism on Friday morning, indicating that President Putin has finally lost patience with his vociferous criticism of Russia’s faltering approach to the war in Ukraine.
In a post on his Telegram account, Girkin’s wife said representatives of Russia’s Investigative Committee came to their home at around 11:30 a.m. “I was not at home at that time. Soon, according to the concierge, they took my husband under the arms and took him away in an unknown direction,” Miroslava Reginskaya wrote.
She added that she’d learned from friends that he “was charged under article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (extremism).”
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“I do not know anything about the whereabouts of my husband, he did not get in touch,” she added.
A law enforcement source confirmed to the TASS state news agency that Girkin had indeed been detained in Moscow. “Currently, investigative actions are being carried out with him,” the source said.
Girkin, who is also known as Igor Strelkov, is a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and Russian Army veteran who became an ardently pro-war military blogger backing the invasion of Ukraine. He has also been personally involved in military operations in Ukraine himself, having been a major figure in Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and organizing Moscow-backed militias in eastern Ukraine.
Last year, he was also convicted of murder in absentia by a Dutch court for his role in the downing of Flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, despite his denials of involvement.
Since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Girkin has been witheringly critical of the way Moscow has handled the war. He has repeatedly called for a general mobilization of the Russian population to avoid the invasion ending in failure, and has even called for Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to be executed by firing squad. Like other ultra-nationalists, Girkin has also backed the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons.
Possibly his most serious misstep, however, was launching a new pro-war nationalist party in Russia in March. His so-called “Club of Angry Patriots” said it viewed Putin as the only real guarantor of stability in Russia, but Girkin believed continued battlefield failures in Ukraine could lead to the collapse of the Russian state.
In a Reuters interview in May, Girkin said a “systemic crisis is brewing in Russia.” “We are on the cusp of very grave internal political changes of a catastrophic character,” he said. “All healthy forces need to create organizations which will take part in the political battle which is inevitable—and which has already started.”
When asked specifically if he thought it was naive that he could launch his new opposition party without the assent of the Kremlin, Girkin answered: “I do hope you would not call me a naive person.” He added that Putin’s removal from power would precipitate “the collapse of Russia.”
The specifics of the extremism allegations against him are not yet clear. But RBC reports that the investigation stems from a former employee of Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary force. As with the Russian Defense Ministry, Girkin has also been highly critical of Prigozhin’s command.
The Wagner boss retaliated by suggesting that Girkin had surrendered a city in eastern Ukraine in 2014 in exchange for bribes from Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov. Girkin later accused Wagner militants of carrying out the 2015 assassination of a pro-Russian commander in Ukraine’s occupied Luhansk region.
