Igor Girkin’s Arrest Points to Kremlin Power Struggles

The arrest of a prominent Russian military blogger who had been a vocal critic of Moscow’s handling of the Ukraine war indicates power struggles behind closed doors in the Kremlin, according to a new assessment.

On Friday, the wife of former Russian security service (FSB) operative, Igor Girkin, said in a post to Telegram that the former soldier, who had commanded pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine from 2014, had been arrested for allegedly inciting extremism by FSB officers. He was detained at around 11:30 a.m. local time and taken to an unknown location, Miroslava Reginskaya said in a statement on Girkin’s popular Telegram channel.

Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, is considered a war criminal by some Western countries, and was charged by Kyiv authorities with shooting down flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. Along with three others, he was found guilty of the murder of the 298 people on board the flight.

Igor Girkin (Strelkov), the former senior military commander of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” and nationalist blogger, sits inside a glass defendant’s cage during a hearing to consider a request on his pre-trial arrest in Moscow on July 21, 2023. On Friday, the wife of the former Russian security service worker said in a post to Telegram that he had been arrested on extremism charges. VLADIMIR KURASHOV/AFP via Getty Images

After appearing in a court in Moscow, he was remanded in pre-trial custody until September 18 following his arrest in the capital. Girkin has denied all charges.

Newsweek reached out to the Kremlin via email for comment on Sunday.

Girkin, who has more than 820,000 followers on Telegram, has openly criticized the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine and has published commentaries of Russian strategy and what he claims are operational failures. Earlier this week, Girkin called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “useless coward,” saying Moscow “will not survive another six years” under his rule.

But his arrest appears to show a “shifting balance of power among Kremlin factions,” as well as “a notable factionalism” within his former employer, Russia’s FSB, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said on Saturday.

Girkin has likely had the backing of an unknown FSB operative, and has accessed fake passports from the FSB, the ISW claimed. But the involvement of an FSB department in building the case against Girkin could suggest splits within the FSB itself, the think tank reported.

The ranking figures in the FSB may have “decided to stop protecting Girkin as he increasingly became more adversarial towards the Kremlin,” the ISW wrote, or theorized that the arrest comes as the FSB has reportedly lost some of its power within the Russian leadership.

On Saturday, the British Defense Ministry said Girkin’s arrest was “likely to infuriate” other well-known military bloggers and serving members of Russia’s armed forces who perceive Girkin as “an astute military analyst and patriot.”

Russia’s military bloggers, often called far-right and nationalist, have become a key reference point for judging Russian military support for Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

However, there was a “lack of widespread outrage” among Russian military bloggers, the ISW said on Saturday, arguing that Girkin’s detention “is unlikely to deeply agitate the majority of the Russian ultranationalist community and Russian military personnel, contrary to some Western reporting.”

In a post on Girkin’s Telegram account, a message of support for said he “went through five wars and gave his whole life to serve the Motherland.”

Girkin has publicly rowed with Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has launched his own sustained attacks on the Russian military and Defense Ministry’s management of the war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin led members of the mercenary group in an aborted march towards Moscow in June, which ended with Prigozhin agreeing to relocate to Belarus, along with many Wagner fighters. Footage posted by Wagner sources last week then suggested that Prigozhin was in Belarus at a Wagner camp after weeks of uncertainty around Prigozhin’s fate.

Although no ally of the Wagner Group, Girkin was “likely only prepared to push the limits of public criticism” because of the mercenaries’ short-lived rebellion, the British Defense Ministry said.

“The taboo against unmasked criticism of the Putin regime has significantly weakened,” the government department added.