“I am the man who started the war in Ukraine”. This is how in October 2014, Igor Guirkin, better known by his name of Igor Strelkov, defined himself to a Russian newspaper. When, in the spring of 2014, eastern Ukraine plunged into civil war, this former soldier and FSB agent, who had passed through Chechnya, Moldova, the Balkans… was, in fact, on the job everywhere. In Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk, he organized separatist militias, put pressure on local deputies to get them to vote for Ukraine’s secession and ask for its attachment to Russia. In the ensuing civil war, he was appointed Defense Minister of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. Sloviansk, Ilovaisk… Strelkov is in all the battles against the forces of kyiv.
At the time, Strelkov was in open conflict with Vladislav Surkov, Vladimir Putin’s “Mister Ukraine” (and hero of Giuliano da Empoli’s novel, “The Kremlin Mage”). The position of Moscow, which refuses at the time to officially recognize the independence of the separatist republics and finds its account perfectly in a “frozen conflict”, does not suit him. Strelkov fumes against the Minsk agreements, which he considers a betrayal. Too intransigent, uncontrollable, he was dismissed from his post in August 2014. “They used him, as they used many of us”, summarizes bitterly one of his comrades in arms at the time.
Back in Russia, banished from the Donbass, Strelkov ruminates on his betrayed cause, joins a minority and noisy fringe of the Russian political landscape, these ultranationalists who find that Putin does not do enough. Strelkov, at the time, no longer interested many people. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army in February 2022 will put the former blaster back in the spotlight. Because, while the forces of Moscow accumulate military disappointments, his angry speech finds more and more echo.
Incapable coward
The war is lost, he repeats at length in Telegram posts and YouTube videos. Everything will go from bad to worse, and Russia is heading straight into the abyss because of the indecision and incompetence of the civil and military authorities. A point of view that has become popular among many bloggers and “war correspondents”.
Where Strelkov stands out from the rest is that he never hesitates to attack Putin in person… with sometimes staggering violence. “The country will not survive six more years in the power of this incapable coward,” he wrote again on July 18 on his Telegram channel to 870,000 subscribers. In April 2023, Strelkov even created a proto-political party, the “Angry Patriots Club”, an “association of those who are not only motivated by money, who really serve the fatherland, the people and the country”.
Highly placed supporters
How could he afford such activism for so long, when so many opponents languish in prison for much less than that? Supporters in very high places, suppose some Kremlinologists. Would the FSB continue to protect its former agent? Or, as others speculate, is Strelkov being guided by the Kremlin to provide an outlet for disappointed ultranationalists? His former comrade offers another explanation: “He has documents on arms deliveries and smuggling organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2014. If he were to die, they will be made public”. Whatever protection he enjoyed, it has ceased to have effect. On July 21, Igor Strelkov was arrested in Moscow and immediately sent to pre-trial detention. Accused of “extremism”, he faces five years in prison. “It is possible that after the Prigojine revolt, the security services must show the authorities that they are working to prevent such events from happening again”, considers Russian political scientist Andrei Pertsev.
A document leaked the day of Strelkov’s arrest supports this interpretation. This is a report submitted to the Kremlin by a Russian deputy before Wagner’s revolt, and which the leakers claim has since been “reactivated”. The report is alarmed at the risks to state authority posed by “hysterical criticism” from ultranationalists. They must be made to fall into line and cease their recriminations, recommends the author. And “take repressive measures against those who are too mad to negotiate with them”. Foremost among these, the report mentioned Igor Strelkov.