Russia ‘Ultra-Patriot’ Jailed After Insulting Putin

The last time I saw Igor Girkin was five years ago in the stairwell of a Moscow news agency.
“Would you consider giving me an interview?” I asked. “No,” he replied sharply and scurried away.

I saw him again today. No stairwell. This time, Girkin was in a caged dock surrounded by police in the Moscow City Court.

Along with other media we were allowed in to film him for just one minute before the end of his trial.

A police dog kept barking. Girkin found that amusing. The verdict less so. Minutes later he was found guilty on extremism charges and sentenced to four years in a penal colony.

This wasn’t his first conviction.

In The Hague in 2022, in absentia, Girkin was found guilty of the murder of 298 people: the passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

The Boeing jet had been shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 by Russian-controlled forces in the early stages of Russia’s war there.

Girkin was one of three men sentenced to life imprisonment. A judgement he ignored.

A year after we’d met in the stairwell, I managed to get through to Girkin on the phone and ask him about the Hague.

“I do not recognise the authority of the Dutch court on this matter,” he told me.

“I am a military man and I am not going to accept that a civilian court in a foreign country has the authority to convict a person who took part in someone else’s civil war, only because their civilians were killed.
 
“Do you know who shot down [the plane]?”

“The rebels didn’t shoot down the Boeing. I have nothing more to say.”

Click to read more: Russia ‘Ultra-Patriot’ Jailed After Insulting Putin

Source: BBC