Girkin was sent to a detention center for two months after he compared Putin to ‘lice’

The Mishchany court in Moscow has arrested the blogger and former defense minister of “DNR” Igor Girkin. Detained on Friday in a criminal case for incitement to extremist activities (Part 2, Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), Girkin, according to a court decision, will be remanded in custody until September 18.

Girkin, sentenced in absentia in the Netherlands to life in prison for the 2014 Boeing strike over the Donbass, faces five years in prison.

Formally, the criminal case against Girkin is related to two posts on his Telegram channel. The first concerns the possible capitulation of Crimea, the second concerns the non-payment of alimony to the army, said his lawyer Alexander Molokhov. But the house search, detainment, and then arrest came three days after Girkin launched a string of harsh attacks against President Vladimir Putin, calling him a “thread” and a “lice,” among other things.

“For 23 years, the country was headed by a nobody who managed to” show off “a significant part of the population,” Girkin wrote on July 18 on his Telegram channel, which has more than 800,000 subscribers. “Now it is the last island of state legitimacy and stability. Hacking it illegally means “finishing” the work of those who put the Unique Edge on the throne in due course. But the country will not last another 6 years under the power of this cowardly mediocrity, ”Girkin was indignant.

“I guess … sorry for bad French,” described the situation around Girkin’s arrest, an interlocutor of The Moscow Times in the presidential administration.

“At some point he lost his sense of threat, for some reason he believed he could say anything. But now we are not allowed to do that to anyone,” the source said.

Previously, Girkin, who has been unsuccessfully trying to create an ultranationalist party since 2014, did not allow himself such harsh attacks on Putin, arguing that he is a legitimate leader who is able to stop Russia from “disease”. But Girkin’s rhetoric, which insists on a general mobilization for the military destruction of Ukraine, changed dramatically after the revolt of the Wagner PMC led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Girkin accused the latter of “intercepting” his turbo-patriotic theses and assessed what happened as the beginning of a “distemper”. At the same time, Girkin criticized Putin’s inability to punish the “rebels” who killed more than 10 Russian military pilots during the campaign against Moscow.