The arrest of Igor Girkin, accused of “extremism”, will enrage elements of the Russian armed forces, as well as the rest of the community of war bloggers who have followed the conflict in Ukraine. The warning comes from the British Ministry of Defense’s secret services, who underline in their daily update on the war on Twitter that Girkin is seen by many Russian soldiers as a “patriot and astute military analyst”.
Former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Igor Girkin has been convicted by a Dutch court of downing Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 after recently becoming critical of the Kremlin. According to the British Ministry of Defence, the blogger has long been skeptical of the role of the Russian army in Ukraine, but in recent days his comments on social media have become “direct criticism of President Vladimir Putin and his role in power”.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in January 2022, Girkin had repeatedly declared his willingness to go to the war zone, while also criticizing the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry, as well as Chief of General Staff Valeri Gerasimov and Wagner Group founder Yevgeni Prigozhin.
In November last year, a court in The Hague (which assumed jurisdiction over the downing of flight MH17, as 193 of the 298 fatalities were of Dutch nationality) convicted Girkin of the attack, as well as Russian national Serguei Dubinski and Ukrainian national Leonid Jarchenko.
The Malaysia Airlines plane, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was hit by a missile while flying over eastern Ukraine, an area heavily ravaged by clashes between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatist militias (with whom Girkin worked).
Explosion and severed bridge
On the ground yesterday was all about the attack with a Ukrainian drone that caused the explosion of an ammunition depot in Crimea. The Moscow-imposed governor of the region ordered the evacuation of residents within a five-kilometer radius. Russian authorities also temporarily halted road traffic on the bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula to Russia, just days after an attack damaged that infrastructure.
In early June, Ukraine launched a counter-offensive to regain territories taken by Russia and expressed its intention to regain Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelensky had a telephone conversation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss “future steps” to unblock the Black Sea corridor for grain exports. On Monday, Russia announced the suspension of the agreement, saying commitments on the Russian side were not kept.
Source: DN
