MOSCOW (Reuters) -Prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin was convicted by a Moscow court on Thursday of inciting extremism and sentenced to four years in a penal colony.
Girkin, who denied the charge, has accused President Vladimir Putin and the army top brass of not pursuing the Ukraine war effectively enough and had also publicly entertained ideas about running against Putin in an upcoming presidential election.
His case has been closely watched as an indication of how far the Kremlin will tolerate aggressive criticism of its war effort in Ukraine, something it calls a “special military operation”.
Girkin was remanded in custody in July last year after setting up the “Club of Angry Patriots” to save Russia from what he said was the danger of systemic turmoil due to military failures in Ukraine and jostling in the elite to eventually succeed Putin.
In one of his most outspoken tirades, in a post on July 18 on his official Telegram channel, followed by more than 760,000 people, Girkin peppered Putin with personal insults and urged him to pass power “to someone truly capable and responsible”.
A former officer for Russia’s FSB security service and battlefield commander also known as Igor Strelkov, Girkin helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and, soon after, to organise pro-Russian militias who wrested part of eastern Ukraine out of Kyiv’s control – events that started Russia’s war on Ukraine.
He was handed a life sentence in absentia by a Dutch court in 2022 for his alleged role in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, with the loss of 298 passengers and crew. He denied wrongdoing at the time.
(Reporting by Reuters;Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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