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Strelkov dressed
as a White Guard of the Russian Civil War (specnaz.ru)
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INTERNET
SOURCE: http://georgiatoday.ge/news/3927/Ex-Separatist-Leader-Launches-Party-Aimed-at-Restoring-Russia%E2%80%99s-Empire
Ex-Separatist Leader
Launches Party Aimed at Restoring Russia’s Empire
MOSCOW- Igor Girkin, a former commander and
self-declared defense minister of Ukraine’s separatist Donetsk People’s
Republic, has officially announced the creation of an ultra-nationalist,
irredentist political party known as the Russian National Movement.
A former FSB colonel and veteran of several
post-Soviet wars, Girkin rose to prominence in the early stages of Ukraine’s
war in its eastern Donbass region.
Known for his stridently anti-Western rhetoric and
Russian chauvinism, Girkin said his movement would join with other like-minded
nationalist political groups to create a party that would reassert Moscow’s
authority over its former imperial dominions.
The movement held its first party congress in
Moscow on May 28 where it unveiled a political platform that aims to restore
Russia’s imperial glory.
"The lands where Russians live, which are
soaked in the blood of the Russian people, have the right to become a part of
Russia. We will unite the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus and other
historical Russian lands into a single all-Russian superstate and transform the
entire territory of the former Soviet Union into an unconditional Russian
sphere of influence," the party’s manifesto says.
Through his press officer, Girkin said the Russian
National Movement fully rejects President Vladimir Putin’s regime and calls for
an end to the current climate of fear and intimidation of Russia's citizens.
In addition to opposing the policies of the Kremlin
– which they see as too lenient, liberal and Western-influenced – Girkin’s
party has called for a strict quota system for migrant workers from the former
Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus and the cancelling of laws on
internet control.
The creation of a new ultranationalist party comes
several months after Girkin hinted he was looking into entering politics. In
October 2015, he said that he planned to create a party that would oppose
Putin’s government and “respond to the Western fascist threat that Russia faces
today."
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The commander,
pictured with his bodyguards in Donetsk last week, claimed blood serum and
medication had been found at the site in eastern Ukraine
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Crimea Involvement
Girkin, who rose to international prominence under
his nom de guerre Strelkov (or “Shooter”) as the commander of pro-Russian
separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, played a key role in the invasion of the
Crimea Peninsula.
He organized, trained and eventually commanding the
self-styled Crimean defense forces in the lead-up to Russia’s annexation of the
strategic Black Sea region.
He has since been identified by a former Crimean
separatist as having commanded the FSB's special forces units that trained
pro-Russian volunteers, which were used to ensure the Kremlin's takeover of
Crimea and later took part in military operations in various parts of eastern
Ukraine.
According to an interview that Girkin gave to
Russian media in January 2015, support for Moscow’s annexation of Crimea was
far from universal and required the use of his volunteer units and regular
Russian forces to ensure the result the Kremlin desired.
"The overwhelming national support for our
self-defense units, as portrayed by the Russian media, was complete fiction. We
had to use those defense units to force the (Crimean) deputies to vote (to join
Russia),” Girkin said in the interview.
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Igor
Strelkov with a flag
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Staunch Russian Nationalist
A 45-year-old Moscow native, Girkin is a historical
military re-enactment enthusiast and battle-hardened veteran who fought in
several of the brutal wars that broke out in the former Soviet republics and
Balkans in the 1990s.
Described as a staunch Russian nationalist, he has
written for right-wing Russian newspaper Zavtra - run by anti-Semitic Russian
nationalist Alexander Prokhanov - since the mid-1990s. While he was a regular
contributor to the paper, he met and later collaborated with future separatist
political leader, Alexander Borodai.
Girkin has also been a frequent contributor to the
Abkhazian Network News Agency, a Russian-language publication that supports
Abkhaz separatism in Georgia.
According to his personal diaries that were leaked
in 2014, Girkin fought on the side of pro-Russian separatists in Moldova’s
breakaway Transnistria region in early 1992.
Later that year he travelled with hundreds of other
Russians to the Balkans to fight for Serbian ultranationalists in the 1992-95
Bosnian War. According to Bosnian media, he and his Russian volunteer unit took
part in a 1992 massacre of hundreds of Bosnian civilians in Visegrad.
He later served as an FSB colonel from 1996-2014,
including a seven-year deployment to Chechnya from 1999-2005. Russian human
rights group Memorial has accused Girkin of taking part in the forced
disappearance of dozens of Chechen civilians.
Memorial alleges that Girkin was responsible for
the abduction and murder of Chechen residents in the war-torn republic's
Vedensky District while he served with the 45th Guards Detached Spetsnaz
Brigade, a special-forces paratrooper unit.
Girkin was quoted in Russian ultranationalist media
saying, "The people (Chechens) we captured and
questioned almost always disappeared without a trace after we were done with
them."
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Igor Girkin
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Commander of DNR Forces
At the time of the Crimean crisis, Girkin
reportedly resigned from the FSB and presented himself as an official emissary
of the Kremlin to the pro-Russian leader of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov.
Once the seizure of the region was complete, he and
his trained units travelled to Ukraine’s eastern city of Donetsk to take part
in the capture of the region’s government buildings.
Girkin later established his headquarters in the
separatist stronghold Slavyansk, a drab Soviet industrial town of 120,000 located
two hours northwest of Donetsk.
His takeover of Slavyansk and nearby Kramatorsk
quickly descended into an organized reign of terror as he enacted harsh
Stalin-era military laws that included curfews, summary executions and
kidnappings as well as the torture of pro-Ukrainian activists and arrest of
Western journalists.
Girkin, himself, admitted in January to ordering
the execution of several civilians who were convicted by ad-hoc military
courts.
"Under the military legislation, we
tried and executed those who we convicted," Girkin told Russia's
Komsomolskaya Pravda. "
While I was in Slavyansk, four people were
executed. Two of them were from the militia and one was a local that we shot
for looting. Another civilian was executed for killing a serviceman."
Girkin later admitted that one of the executed
individuals was a pro-Kiev activist and supporter of the Ukrainian nationalist
group, Pravy Sektor.
Downfall
Nearly three months after Slavyansk became the
heart of darkness of the pro-Russian separatist movement, Ukraine’s beleaguered
military slowly began to gain ground against Girkin’s forces.
They eventually recaptured the city in July 2014
and forced Girkin to retreat to Donetsk.
His defeat at Slavyansk and the subsequent shoot
down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, ushered in Girkin’s rapid
fall from grace.
Almost immediately after the plane disappeared from
radar contact, Girkin boasted on his Vkontakte social networking page that his
troops had downed a large plane. He later deleted the post once it became
apparent that his forces had shot down a passenger aircraft, killing all 298
people on board.
He was abruptly removed from command by Moscow
officials in August 2014. The FSB had allegedly grown impatient with the
attention caused by the downing of MH17.
Girkin has repeatedly accused the Kremlin’s special
envoy to the rebel republics and close Putin confident, Vladislav Surkov, of
ordering his dismissal.
The separatists’ political leader, Borodai, claimed
Girkin had to be gagged and handcuffed before he was put on a military
transport back to Moscow.
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Strelkov co-founds “Committee of January
25th” to work against Ukraine, Belarus, and Russian liberals
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/31/88551/]
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Political Future
Since his return to Russia, Girkin has been a vocal
critic of the Kremlin’s handling of the war in the Donbass. He has consistently
criticized the Russian government’s decision to abstain from major combat
operations in an attempt to freeze the conflict.
With the establishment of a political party, many
inside and outside of Russia, worry that Girkin may be able to translate his
near-mythical popularity amongst Russian ultranationalists and those who
believe in re-establishing the country as an empire into a formidable political
movement with a powerful mandate.
By Nicholas Waller
02 June 2016 07:08
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