Just when we’re beginning to think Yevgeny Prigozhin has finally been laid to rest, along comes the next iteration of hard-line lunatic to grace our world with his presence: Igor Girkin. He’s not a military man, but a Russian pro-war blogger, presently serving time on charges of extremism for criticizing — not the war itself, of which he approves — but Putin’s disastrous mishandling of it. His specific sin was publicly calling Putin a “cowardly mediocrity.”

(Actually, if he weren’t in favor of the war, I might almost learn to like him for that. — Just kidding.)

As others have done, Girkin has become quite vocal from his prison cell, through his attorney. But the others — notably, Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza — have been imprisoned for their outspoken opposition to the Putin regime and the invasion of Ukraine. Girkin, on the other hand, believes that Putin and his military leaders have not gone far enough in Ukraine, and is in favor of not just an increased mobilization of troops, but a “full mobilization of Russia’s population.” I’m not sure whether that’s meant to include women and children, but it doesn’t sound good.

And as if that weren’t enough, he “dictated a doomsday-esque diatribe to his Telegram [Russian social media account] via his attorney this week, warning that Russia is on the brink of collapse and offering himself up as a uniting force for remaining ‘patriots.’” [Erin Snodgrass, Insider, September 19, 2023.]

Holy crap! He wants Putin’s office!

But wait . . . there’s more. Girkin, a former operative with the FSB (successor to the internal security half of the KGB before it reinvented itself as two separate agencies), apparently goes by the nom de guerre “Strelkov.” That’s Russian for “shooter.” Nice.

At least Prigozhin’s professed purpose in trying to storm the Kremlin back in June was to remove and replace the heads of the military he felt were incompetent, and not to topple the entire government. (And we all saw how that turned out.) Girkin, on the other hand, is the boy who would be king. But considering that he’s already behind bars, I’m not sure how he plans to do that. By stirring up the masses to the point of revolution? Has he seen too many movies of the storming of the Bastille? Or his own country’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution? That went well, didn’t it?

Hey, Igor — I’m talking to you! Are you listening? Is this what you have in mind? . . .

I make no predictions about this guy; I don’t know enough about him as yet. But I will say this: No matter how bad things are now, they can always get worse. Because after Putin . . . what then?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/22/23

* The first Streltsy units of riflemen, or infantry, were created by Tsar Ivan IV — more commonly known as Ivan the Terrible — between 1545 and 1550, and remained active until around 1720.