Only Patriots Seem to Go to Prison in Putin's Russia

Did Putin personally intervene to release foreign agents and to arrest Strelkov?

Yet another damning bit of news surfaced about a week ago and has generated buzz among the samizdat community. Following Prigozhin’s arrest, there was a wave of political arrests in Russia. We covered this at the time, and, in fact, I believe that I am the only English-speaking Z-blogger who did so. All others simply pretended nothing happened. Some ZAnonners gloated about the arrest of Igor “Strelkov” Girkin in particular.

He was labeled a 5th columnist and a Neo-Nazi by Kremlin propagandists writing in English who pretend to be alternative or samizdat.

In reality, Strelkov was one of the main instigators and early leaders of the initial Donbass rebellion. So, if he was a CIA Nazi, does it follow then that Donbass was just a provocation and a false flag used against Russia? If so, why is Russia ostensibly fighting a war of liberation there? Play the logic out in your head to realize that this anti-Strelkov talking point makes no sense.

As we all should know by now, Strelkov was the main critic of the Kremlin coming from the right of the political spectrum. Here is quick list of accusations Strelkov leveled at the Kremlin:

• Putin was originally a Western asset recruited during his time in Germany

• Putin is still working for Western interests by keeping a tight leash on Russian patriots

• Moscow killed off the original Donbass leaders and commanders to try and end the rebellion

• The Russian Army had been gutted by Shoigu and was incapable of defeating Ukraine in a war

• Waiting 8 years only gave time for Ukraine to fortify, prepare and propagandize for further war with Russia

• Minsk I and II were frauds

• Ethnic oligarchs with socialist-sounding last names run Russia

• The Kremlin was deliberately demociding the Russian population with Muslim migration

• Prigozhin was a traitor and an opportunist and would rebel against Moscow

And there was more, I’m sure, that I’m not remembering now.

What is funny to remember is that Strelkov used to say that he supported Putin and hoped that Putin would realize that he cannot trust his Western handlers. He would repeat that during war time it is necessary to rally behind the leader. I don’t recall the exact moment when he gave up on Putin, but it was probably 6 months before I did the same. Me, being the eternal optimist, I held off on criticizing Putin systematically and constantly until about the end of this summer, the mutiny and the assassination of Prigozhin being the last straw for me.

Say what you will about Strelkov, but he has consistently espoused what I would consider to be a moderate position within the patriotic community in Russia. In fact, on many social and ethnic issues, he is far too soft for my hot-headed tastes. So, his arrest and the subsequent treatment that he has received is not the equivalent of Russia persecuting some extremist Taliban figure. No, Strelkov’s views are probably shared by the majority of Russian society.

Actually, if we filter out “Russians” living in the big cities and women in general, it probably represents 90+% of the views of ethnic Russian men. Even Communists will agree with Strelkov on the majority of his positions and simply chafe at his romantic views on the monarchy. Most Stalinists are also Orthodox and pro-Tsar. They view Stalin as a strong leader aka a good Tsar. This is the result of political meta-schizophrenia + perennial patterns (love for the Autocrat) and so a Stalinist and a Monarchist in Russia would be able to find a common language.

In other words, Strelkov is no extremist. Why then, is he still being prosecuted? Do we even know what crime he committed?

TopWar weighs in:

On December 14, the Moscow City Court began to consider the merits of the case of the former Minister of Defense of the DPR, reserve FSB colonel Igor Strelkov (Girkin), who is accused of public calls for engaging in extremism. The meeting is being held behind closed doors, since the investigation has classified the case due to the alleged discovery of state secrets. It is not entirely clear what the state secret is if Strelkov is being tried for public posts on Telegram.

The former FSB colonel was detained on July 21, on the same day the Meshchansky Court of Moscow put him under arrest on charges of allegedly calls for extremist activities. Since then he has been under arrest. The reason for the detention of Igor Strelkov (Girkin) was revealed to be statements sent to the prosecutor's office (in other words, denunciations) from several citizens, including the doctor of the Wagner PMC Dmitry Petrovsky.

We will discuss in this material what Igor Strelkov is being judged for.

So, the treacherous Wagner organization called for Strelkov’s arrest and the government was happy to oblige them. Why not just start arresting Russian citizens that the ICC at the Hague considers to be problematic? Isn’t that the same principle at play here?

He is also, apparently, being prosecuted for trying to incite a rebellion, essentially.

Any criticism of the Kremlin, and, The Shoigu in particular, is to be considered treason, if the Strelkov precedent is upheld. This despite Shoigu’s multiple failures and blatant self-enrichment schemes and active sabotage of the war effort. As an aside, The Shoigu just came out recently and declared that the MoD had achieved all of its SMO goals in Ukraine this year. In other words, the official “patriotic” position is “Mission Accomplished”.

This was also a recent talking point generating buzz on Telegram. It is worth the quick digression. Here:

The Russian army completed the main task of 2023, thwarting the Ukrainian counter-offensive, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the final conference call.

"The main efforts in the past year were focused on achieving the goals of the special military operation. The main one is to disrupt the loudly announced counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by Ukraine and its NATO allies. This task has been successfully completed,” the army general said.

He emphasized that the task was accomplished thanks to effectively built defensive lines, reliability of equipment and decisive actions of the soldiers.

Russians from pretty much all political backgrounds gathered to mock this news on the Yaplakal forum, and all over Telegram and VK.

If this is what winning looks like … two years in to the special two week policing operation … well …

But back to Strelkov:

A criminal case was opened against Strelkov under Article 280 (“Public calls for extremist activities”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The reason for the case was two posts in his Telegram channel. In one of them there were discussions about the possibility of surrendering Crimea to Ukraine, and in the second - about the non-payment of monetary allowances to the mobilized residents of the DPR.

If the situation with the post about Crimea is not too clear, it is not very clear what exactly is there it was written and what was extremist there, and given the secrecy of the case, apparently no one will voice this - then with a post about the non-payment of monetary allowances to the mobilized residents of the DPR turns out to be quite interesting.

According to Strelkov’s testimony, he read a message on the VKontakte website of the former manager of the DPR Council of Ministers and ex-governor of the Pskov region, Evgeniy Mikhailov, that military personnel of the DPR People’s Militia Corps, called up as part of the mobilization on the eve of the start of the special operation, they were not provided with monetary allowances until the end of May.

And then, after checking the reliability of this information, he posted a link to it and accompanied it with his own emotional commentary (among which was the phrase “it’s not enough to start shooting people for this”), which has been assessed as extremist activity. This accusation looks, to put it mildly, quite strange, if not far-fetched. “It’s not enough to start shooting people for this”

[NOTE: It can also just be read: the responsible officers/bureaucrats should be put to death for stealing money from DPR militiamen]

Consequently, we are talking about the fact that Strelkov is being judged for his personal emotional assessment of this fact (the phrase “that the republican authorities had not paid a single salary to the citizens mobilized into his unit for three months; they had to pay from donations collected by caring people. Moreover, Last year, many military officers and many public figures, for example Alexander Khodakovsky, wrote about problems with payments to mobilized residents of the DPR and LPR.

(…)

At the same time, Evgeny Mikhailov, who originally posted the post, is on the list of witnesses and is expected to be questioned in court on December 20, when the next court hearing will take place. That is, the reliability of information about the non-payment of monetary allowances to mobilized servicemen in a specific unit and a specific period of time, apparently, is not questioned, otherwise a criminal case would also have been opened against E. Mikhailov.

So, the guy who shared the information about Donbass soldiers’ going unpaid is being asked to testify in court presumably against Strelkov. The information is not up for dispute — money has routinely been stolen from soldiers fighting in Donbass by Moscow-placed higher-ups. If it were untrue, and the courts had proof, they’d nail this Mikhailov to the wall.

No, Strelkov is being tone-policed. The court alleges that he constitutes a threat to the integrity of the Russian state. That with his words, he could essentially whip up a rebellion.

And I actually agree with this statement.