Jailed former separatist leader Igor Girkin has run for president in next year’s Russian presidential election. “I consider myself more competent in the military field than the sitting president, and certainly more competent than the secretary of defense,” Girkin said Thursday. President Vladimir Putin was “too friendly”.
The head of state was “duped not only by his partners in the West and Kiev, but also by the heads of our security services, intelligence services and military industry,” Girkin explained in his channel on the Telegram online service.
Girkin is accused of close ties to an oligarch
Unlike Putin, he has no millionaire friends, said the 52-year-old, speaking out on numerous corruption allegations. However, Girkin is said to have close ties to ultra-nationalist oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.
Arrested for criticizing the Russian military leadership
Military blogger Girkin also works under the pseudonym Igor Strelkov and has over 730,000 followers on Telegram. In July, he was arrested for “public incitement to extremism” and faces up to five years in prison. Girkin supports the Russian offensive in Ukraine, but has publicly criticized the Kremlin’s military leadership.
During the Kremlin-backed uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Girkin became known as the commander of separatists in the internationally unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic. A Dutch court last year sentenced him in absentia to life in prison for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.
election next year
There will be presidential elections in Russia next year. With the elections approaching, the Russian authorities are no longer cracking down only on liberal critics, but also on nationalist opponents of the Kremlin, who are calling for an intensification of the aggressive war against Ukraine.
Source: Krone
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