A court in Moscow on Tuesday rejected the request for provisional release of opponent Igor Girkin. The man is accused of extremism, he is known as a critic of the regime. The man has been in custody since mid-July.
The 52-year-old blogger, best known by his pseudonym Strelkov, was arrested in July after articles criticizing Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. The reports followed shortly after the rebellion of the Wagner militias. The Moscow court on Tuesday ruled that Girkin must remain in pre-trial detention at least until September 18.
Girkin faces up to five years in prison for ‘inciting the public to engage in extremist activity’. His arrest is part of a beginning of suppression of power within Russian nationalist circles. It preceded the plane crash that killed another nationalist figure, Wagner’s boss Yevgueni Prigozhin, by a month. The West and Ukraine suspect Russia of this.
Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, has been accused by Ukraine of being a former Russian intelligence agent. He is an outspoken critic, like Prigozhin, of the Russian military command, whom he accuses of incompetence.
In one of his last posts on Telegram, he directly attacked Vladimir Putin, writing: a “poor” and a “coward” whose leadership Russia could not endure for another six years.
About fifty supporters of Girkin gathered at the courthouse on Tuesday, others went to a nearby chapel to pray.
Girkin was previously sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in the Netherlands for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, which killed 298 people.
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