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Thursday, January 21, 2016

IGOR STRELKOV – STALIN ERA EXECUTIONS




Former separatist leader brags of executions, challenges Hague court
Jan. 20, 2016 12:18

A former Russian-backed separatist commander has publicly boasted about ordering executions in eastern Ukraine and defiantly claimed he will never be tried in an international court.

Igor Girkin, otherwise known as Igor Strelkov, led separatist forces in Donetsk during some of the most intense fighting in the conflict. He gained a reputation for ruthlessness among even his own men, and he has been accused of involvement in the downing of flight MH17 in July 2014.

Rather than being shamed into silence, however, Girkin bragged about ordering executions in an interview with Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station last week – inadvertently providing his first confession to possible war crimes - and a very public one at that.

“We had a military court, and legislation from 1941 was introduced, legislation by Stalin,” Strelkov said.

“On the basis of that legislation, we tried (people), held tribunals and carried out executions … In total, four people were executed during my time in Sloviansk,” Strelkov said.

News of the executions first surfaced in early July 2014, after Strelkov and his men surrendered Slovyansk to Ukrainian forces. Documents detailing the executions were found at that time and published by the Mashable news agency, though Girkin has never before commented on them. One of the men sentenced to death had merely stolen some clothing from an abandoned neighbor’s home, according to the Mashable report.

Soon after those documents came to light, Ukrainian authorities uncovered a mass grave in the area, suggesting Strelkov may have been responsible for more than just four executions.
Girkin is not the slightest bit concerned about being dragged to The Hague, however.

“International law absolutely does not worry me, because that is an instrument in the hands of the victors. If we are defeated, well, that means they will use the law against me.”

Asked whether he was prepared to stand trial in The Hague for war crimes, Strelkov said simply: “I’m deeply certain that I won’t end up there.”

“I know too much, as they say in a famous film. And second, I will try to do all that I can to ensure that doesn’t happen, on my part,” he said.

But Jan Pieklo, the director of the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation, who helped to prepare a recent report detailing war crimes committed in eastern Ukraine in the hopes of getting justice, said Girkin shouldn’t be so certain.

Noting that Girkin believes he is “untouchable” because he is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Pieklo said that he had previously worked as a war correspondent during the war in Yugoslavia and seen firsthand as Serb leaders displayed the same attitude as Girkin.

The feeling at that time, he said, was that “never ever would Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic be brought to justice.”

“But it happened, and Slobodan Milosevic himself was transported to The Hague, and he died in prison,” he said.

“Maybe one day we could even see Vladimir Putin facing justice,” Pieklo said. “It may be a long way off, it may take a long time, but it could happen.”

The Moscow branch of Human Rights Watch said "Russia can and should investigate this," noting that the International Criminal Court was currently considering whether a formal investigation into crimes committed in eastern Ukraine was warranted under the Rome statute.

Scott Horton of the DLA Piper Global Law Firm declined to comment specifically on Girkin, but said those commanding Girkin could end up facing prosecution for his actions.

“A nation-state that fields an army, and that attracts and directs irregular forces of any sort, has responsibility for enforcement of the law of armed conflict over those forces. Non-enforcement of the laws of armed conflict has possible consequences up the chain of command under the so-called doctrine of command responsibility. If a command authority fails to apply the law of armed conflict by prosecuting and punishing offenders, and if it fails to do this systematically, then responsibility for the wrongdoing can be viewed as transposed from the original offender to the command authority,” Horton told the Kyiv Post.

“The cases turn heavily on the amount of evidence prosecutors are able to build about the command relationship,” he said.

Girkin has identified himself as a colonel of Russia’s Federal Security Service in numerous interviews, and a group of hackers released a tranche of emails purporting to back up that claim in late 2014. Ukrainian authorities have said Girkin is an officer of Russia’s GRU, the external military intelligence directorate.

Girkin is arguably the most notorious of the separatist commanders, having alienated even many of his own men during his time in Donetsk. Alexander Zakharchenko, the current leader of separatist forces in Donetsk, accused Girkin of recklessness in interviews with Russian media in late 2014, complaining that Girkin had been prepared to obliterate entire residential housing blocks for no reason whatsoever.

Shortly after the MH17 catastrophe in July 2014, Girkin was dismissed from his post as commander “at his own request,” according to separatist leadership. Many believed the Kremlin saw him as too much of a liability and asked him to leave, however.

He quickly relocated to Moscow, claiming in interviews with the Russian media that he was fulfilling a duty to protect Putin from enemies and traitors.

Human rights activists in Moscow had warned early on in the conflict that the war in Ukraine was not Girkin’s first time committing war crimes. In June 2014, the Memorial human rights group identified Girkin as the same man who had been known for committing forced disappearances and presumed executions of Chechens during the Second Chechen War in 2001-2002. Like many other crimes from the Second Chechen War, however, those murders were never solved.

Girkin’s press secretary did not respond to an inquiry on why the notorious separatist leader decided to confess to war crimes now, nor on whether he was concerned that although he “knows too much” to face trial, he might simply be killed for that very same reason.

  
Pro-Russian separatist commander Igor Girkin with his Stechkin APS Pistol.

January 19, 2016

Former Commander Of Pro-Russian Separatists Says He Executed People Based On Stalin-Era Laws

by Anna Shamanska

For most of his 42-minute appearance on a radio talk show, former Russia-backed separatist commander Igor Girkin sounded like nothing more than a fanatic discussing a dream now widely dismissed as fantasy.

He spoke of hopes for the creation of a "Novorossia" -- a New Russia stretching across much of Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Odesa, and one day joining a Russian empire including all of Belarus and Ukraine. 

It wasn't until the last minute that the interview with Girkin went from surreal to chilling.

Referring to his time commanding separatists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk in 2014, a host asks him how he stopped the rampant looting.

"With executions," Girkin said matter-of-factly.

According to Girkin, separatist "authorities" installed a military court and introduced 1941 military laws implemented by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

"Under this legislation we tried people and executed the convicted," Girkin said.

"While I was in Slovyansk four people were executed. Two among the military for looting, one local for looting, and one for killing a serviceman," he said on the Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, which is affiliated with a leading pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid.

One of the people killed was an "ideological" supporter of the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector, he said.

Key Separatist Commander

Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was a key commander in the Russia-backed separatist forces in the early stages of the war against Ukrainian government troops that has killed more than 9,000 civilians and combatants since April 2014.

Ukraine's government has called Girkin a Russian agent and accused him of war crimes. He resigned as a rebel commander in August 2014 amid reports that he had been wounded in battle.

Later that year, he told an interviewer that he was a colonel in the Russian FSB, or Federal Security Service -- a statement that was edited out of the interview published by state-run Rossia Segodnya.

In October 2015, the Brussels-based International Partnership for Human Rights provided the International Criminal Court with more than 300 testimonies about alleged military crimes and crimes against humanity that it said had been committed by Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine.

It said that "while crimes committed by both sides of the conflict have been documented, the collected evidence primarily concerns crimes committed by separatists because of security issues related to accessing separatists-controlled territories of Ukraine."

In the radio appearance, Girkin said he was not concerned about the possibility of international prosecution.

"I am not at all bothered by international law, because it's a tool in the hands of winners," he said. "If we are defeated, well then, the norms of these laws will be applied to me."

Fighting has lessened since a February 2015 deal on a cease-fire and steps toward peace, but the Russia-backed separatists still hold large parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Girkin, a former military reenactor, appeared to have the support of both the hosts and those calling in.

"God forbid," one host said, referring to the possibility of Girkin being sent to an international court for prosecution on war crimes charges.  

​​As for his feelings about Stalin, Girkin said he dislikes the dictator as he was in his younger days, but believes that he was a great statesman at the end of his life.

"You can discuss for a long time how much blood and where Stalin spilled it, but at least you can confidently say that he did it not for himself but for the sake of an idea," he said.

  
Look-alike of Igor Strelkov – Grandson of legendary Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov, Alexander Arkadyevich Suvorov

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