Former separatist commander and nationalist military blogger Igor Girkin, a frequent critic of Russia’s leadership, was on Friday arrested and remanded in custody awaiting trial on charges of extremism.
Girkin — better known by his alias Igor Strelkov — is a supporter of the Ukraine offensive, but has also regularly criticized its conduct on the Telegram messaging app, where he is followed by about 875,000 people.
By opening a case against him, observers said authorities were sending a signal that any criticism — even from supporters of the military operation in Ukraine — are off limits in the aftermath of the Wagner mercenary group’s short-lived rebellion.
Photo: AFP
A Moscow court ordered Girkin to be placed in detention pending trial on charges of “public calls for extremism” that could land him in prison for five years.
“Justice in our country, once again, has not triumphed” his lawyer, Alexander Molokhov, told reporters outside the Meshchansky Court in Moscow.
Molokhov said the defense would appeal the court’s decision and explained the case against his client was based on two social media posts in which Girkin discussed Russian-annexed Crimea and army supplies.
Several dozen supporters gathered around the court, with at least one detained.
“Igor Ivanovich Strelkov isn’t just not an extremist: He is a patriot who has gone through five wars in the interests of Russia,” Gubarev said.
In one of his most recent posts Girkin urged Putin to hand over power to a successor.
“The country will not survive another six years of this cowardly mediocrity in power,” he wrote on Telegram.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS