Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. : Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice
Stephen G. Breyer, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Justice Elena Kagan. Justice
Clarence Thomas,
Two years ago, Igor Strelkov was the most notorious
personality of the war in east Ukraine. A former Russian security forces
officer, with a clipped grey moustache and a penchant for historical
re-enactments, Strelkov led the takeover of the town of Slavyansk in April
2014, which presaged the armed conflict across the region.
In Kiev, he was seen as a bloody and ruthless war
criminal – a Kremlin agent sent by Moscow to wreak havoc in Ukraine. In Russia,
he was portrayed as a valiant military hero, leading the local rebel forces in
their fight against Kiev.
He could be found striding through the corridors of the Donetsk rebel headquarters, with a Stechkin pistol in a vintage wooden holster at his hip and flanked by heavily armed bodyguards.
He could be found striding through the corridors of the Donetsk rebel headquarters, with a Stechkin pistol in a vintage wooden holster at his hip and flanked by heavily armed bodyguards.
Two years later, he cuts a very different figure,
during an interview with the Guardian at his small Moscow office. In civilian
clothing and slightly chubbier, he spent the encounter stroking his huge Maine
Coon cat, Grumpy, which lay on the table in front of him. Strelkov has in
recent weeks turned his rhetorical fire on the Kremlin itself, even if he no
longer has an army with which to back up his words.
“Putin and his circle have recently taken steps which
I believe will almost inevitably lead to the collapse of the system,” Strelkov
said. “We don’t know yet how, and we don’t know when, but we are certain it
will collapse, and more likely sooner than later.”
Pulled out of east Ukraine by the Kremlin in August
2014, reportedly because the Russian authorities felt he was too much of a
liability, Strelkov entered a strange twilight zone, prevented from returning
to the conflict or featuring in state-controlled media.
After nearly two years of sitting quietly, the
erstwhile poster boy of the pro-Russia cause last week released a declaration
strongly critical of President Vladimir Putin, and predicting upheaval and
bloodshed in Russia in the near future.
Strelkov, whose real surname is Girkin (Strelkov is a
pseudonym derived from the Russian for “the Shooter”), believes Putin dithered
at the crucial moment in 2014, for fear of breaking off ties between Russia and
the west for good.
A radical nationalist who believes Russia should seize
all the lands where ethnic Russians live, and who describes Ukrainians as
“Russians who speak a different dialect”, Strelkov said it was fatal that Putin
stopped after annexing Crimea.
“He crossed the Rubicon, but then stopped unexpectedly
and illogically. He didn’t retreat, but didn’t go forward either. He has no
ideas and seems to be waiting for a miracle. He’s stuck in the middle of a
swamp.”
Strelkov, who studied history and models himself on
the White officers who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war, has
been put on international sanctions lists for his role in the Ukraine war.
Last week, Polish MP Małgorzata Gosiewska presented a
report on alleged war crimes committed by Strelkov to the international
criminal court in the Hague, and hopes an inquiry will be launched.
Strelkov does not deny having people shot for looting,
but claims the executions were legal, as they were carried out according to a Soviet
law on wartime justice.
“I was the only person to hold trials, and not just
shoot people. It was a troika of judges with a military prosecutor and a
lawyer, and there were innocent verdicts as well,” he said.
“In military circumstances without strict discipline
and without the vengeful sword of justice, the situation would not be
controllable. When I was commanding, there was none of that. Every soldier knew
that if he committed a crime, he would be punished as harshly as an enemy, if
not more harshly. This helped a lot with discipline.”
It is unclear to what extent Strelkov’s actions in
Ukraine were coordinated with the Kremlin. During the annexation of Crimea, in
which Strelkov took part, the Russian military operation was carefully
choreographed.
However, some suggest that when the action moved to east
Ukraine, he was working more in a freelance role, in touch with contacts and
curators in Moscow, but not actively directed by them.
Having fought as a volunteer in Transdniestr and
Bosnia in the early 1990s, he served during both Chechen wars as an officer in
Russia’s FSB security services. He claims he retired from active duty “after a
personal conflict” in 2012, declining to elaborate.
“I was to a large extent an independent figure,” he
insisted of his role in east Ukraine. He said he used all his contacts to
demand a full-scale Russian invasion, but it soon became clear this was not
forthcoming.
Russia has
denied all involvement in Ukraine, though Putin in December admitted there were
“people who carried out certain tasks” in the region. Strelkov himself declined
to comment on the level of Russian official involvement, saying only that “you
may draw your own conclusions”.
There is overwhelming evidence of Russian financial
and military support for the rebels as well as of Russian regular troops
entering the conflict at key moments, and some rebel sources have claimed that
the withdrawal of the unpredictable Strelkov was one of the preconditions set
by the Kremlin ahead of sending troops covertly to inflict a crushing defeat on
the Ukrainians during the battle of Ilovaysk.
Ever since Strelkov was told to leave Ukraine in
August 2014, the Kremlin has put him on the “stop list”; the unofficial list of
those it is impermissible to give airtime to on state television, which
includes most of the liberal opposition.
“I’m an inconvenient figure for them, they don’t know
what to do with me: am I a hero or a terrorist? They can’t arrest and jail me
because it would be seen as bowing to the west to call me a terrorist. But to
give me honours is also inconvenient for them, so I’m in this strange gap.”
An associate complained that nobody wanted to speak to
the former Donetsk commander; even journalists who expressed an interest later
called back to say they had been told it was better not to speak to him.
“The authorities don’t want independent politicians or
people who think freely, whatever camp they belong to. They don’t even want
free-thinking supporters,” said Strelkov.
The manifesto released last week is a mixture of both
surprisingly liberal promises about freedom of speech and free elections,
together with imperial rhetoric of expanding Russian lands and protecting
Russians in former Soviet states.
“We might seem like marginals but it didn’t take the
Bolsheviks more than 1% of the population to change things in 1917,” said Egor
Prosvirnin, who runs a nationalist blog and also signed the declaration
together with Strelkov and a number of other nationalists. “Things could change
very, very quickly.”
Strelkov and his group of nationalist bloggers and fringe
political figures do indeed appear to be marginal figures.
But nationalism is a powerful political force in
Russia, and many wonder if the flames that were fanned in east Ukraine in 2014
will be easy to put out, now that the Kremlin is seeking a diplomatic solution
that would still give it a say in Ukrainian affairs.
“The Kremlin is very scared of nationalists, because
they use the same imperial rhetoric as Putin does but they can do it much
better than him,” said Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and
opposition politician.
“That’s why
there are nationalists in prison, even those who supported Putin. They went to
kiss his feet, and he kicked them away.”
Others say that a figure like Strelkov, after his
brief months in the limelight in 2014, is doomed to remain peripheral from now
on, addressing small groups of nationalists in his discussion tours around the
country, but unlikely to win broad appeal.
Strelkov said he does not plan to stand for elected
office, but thinks his time could come again.
“We do not plan to launch a revolution to depose
Vladimir Putin. Having taken part in five wars, I know very well what it is
like when authority and social infrastructure collapses in big cities.
Nobody wants that, including me. But unfortunately, it
could be inevitable.”
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