Yesterday morning, we found out about the detention and the subsequent arrest of Igor Girkin also known as Igor Strelkov.
Officially, he’s been busted on extremism charges, officially based on a complaint filed by a PMC Wagner military doctor.
But it’s clearly not about extremism.
It’s about a U-ey the government has done on their attitude toward the pro-war crowd spearheaded by the likes of Igor Strelkov.
Let’s quickly recap who this Girkin-Strelkov guy is.
He’s a former army officer who took part in almost all of the military conflicts Russia has been involved with, from Chechnya to Bosnia.
He’s a former FSB op. He had a stint as a head of security for oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.
At the time of the annexation of Crimea, he traveled to the peninsula and was the leader of one of the paramilitary gangs shoring up the occupation.
After that, he headed over to the Donbas.
In his own words, he was among the instigators of the military conflict there.
If it hadn’t been for him, he argues, things would’ve played out “the way they did in Kharkiv.”
In other words, the mutiny would’ve been put down, and today
the Donbas wouldn’t be living amid a ceaseless war and a social quagmire, but as a peaceful region.
Strelkov was implicated in the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
The District Court of The Hague found Girkin guilty of downing the plane and killing 298 souls on board.
He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia.
To be fair, Strelkov is truly a one-of-a-kind character.
He was one of the Donbas commandos who got driven out of the public once the Russian TV viewership got sick and tired of the pointless bloodshed.
But unlike many other notorious figures of the “Russian spring” in the Donbas,
he survived the purge.
Moreover, no one seemed to mind his public outbursts.
Those included complaints and rants posted to social media channels where the veterans and their supporters
were trashing the Russian authorities who had given hope to the locals, only to sell them down the river later.
Between 2015 and 2022, the biggest highlight of Igor Strelkov’s career was arguably his public debate with Alexei Navalny.
Other than that, he sank into oblivion, just like Novorossia he was trying to recreate.
However, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, Strelkov has been a spokesperson for the entire pro-military community,
those who fully support the war,
but not the kind of warn the Russian government is capable of waging.
Let’s wrap it up here. You’ve heard enough about this guy.
Let’s get to the bottom of it: Why did they pull in Strelkov and why now?
Dangerous Whining
We spent quite some time waiting for the aftershocks of Prigozhin’s mutiny to kick in.
No way the repercussions of an armed rebellion could boil down to the Russian political elite
praising each other for a full month, like they did in Gogol’s satirical play The Government Inspector.
Yeah, a crateful of carrots was handed out to those who did nothing but at least didn’t join the mutiny.
That was predictable.
But what about the sticks?
After all, no repression would mean someone would try their luck in Prigozhin’s footsteps.
We’ve maintained ever since that happened that the elite won’t be hit with a wave of repression.
In fact, it’s the other wat around.
No matter the underhandedness, the incompetence, and the botchery of Putin’s minions or the military top brass,
now he’s more dependent on them than ever.
They may be worthless, but they’re Putin’s lot.
They’ll be in it together till the bitter end. Not because they fancy each other.
No, because that’s the only viable option they’ve got.
The repression’s most obvious target was, by the looks of it, the second tier army generals.
For instance, generals Surovikin and Mizintsev have tarnished their track record through their associations with Wagner.
Besides, there are multiple pro-war bloggers that are up there with the official state propaganda.
The latter have decided their voice could be heard.
Why did the public repression start with relatively small-time online talking heads?
Why didn’t they aim at those who pulled their guns on the government?
It’s simple: they act like your backyard Supermen who, after being trashed by their boss,
don’t fight back, but get back home and take it out on their wives and kids.
Weak and cowardly people prefer to vent on those who won’t fight them back, and not on the ones to blame.
In this sense, Prigozhin and his Wagner Group were immune.
Let’s dive into it right after the commercial break.
For whatever abstruse reason, Prigozhin and his Wagner seem immune from repression.
True, we haven’t seen the shape of a knot Prigozhing can tighten up on Putin’s neck at any moment.
But we know for a fact that the instigator of the mutiny got away scot-free.
The money they confiscated from him have been returned.
Putin met both the guy and his associates.
Wagner’s active roster has been scattered all over the place.
Some of the pardoned convicts are now enjoying themselves in southern health resorts.
Some are likely to be stationed in military camps beyond the frontline.
Others have retreated to Belarus.
This isn’t to say that the problem has gone.
Prigozhin’s mutiny is part of a larger phenom.
The government has fostered a demographic for whom war is the ultimate goal and their daily oxygen supply.
These people have made a living off this war as they’ve gained money, status, new audiences, and recognition.
As a next step, they committed a grave transgression as viewed by the regime: they believed in something.
They thought that Feb. 24, 2022, had ushered in something really grandiose and that they would be the architects of a new Russia.
They were certain that those who were merely lucky to share gym memberships with Putin yonks ago
and the sickening, loot-crazed elite would no longer be running the show.
Genuine patriots and harbingers of the truth from the trenches would take over at the helm, they thought.
Long story short, those who’d lived close to a quarter of a century under Putin’s rule suddenly thought it was a revolution.
On the back of it, they thought, a Walmart security guard or a hicktown stringer would have a shot at fame and recognition.
Right out of the gate, all sorts of pro-war social media figures were vying for the most loyal supporter title.
They eagerly supported Putin, the war, their czar, and their homeland.
But as the time went by, it dawned on them that the 18th century was over
and the Ukraine war wasn’t a dazzling overseas campaign, but an ugly, bloody mess.
They realized that Putin would back down while trying to save face.
That the battlefield needs rank the lowest on his list of priorities.
The only thing he’s preoccupied with is getting re-elected and faring well on the polls.
It turned out that the current elite aren’t going to end up at the gallows anytime soon,
and no one has yet traded a spot in the trench for a ministerial role.
On the contrary, all those diecast field marshals and Putin’s lap oligarchs
have double down on their schemes precisely at the expense of kevlar vests, underwear, and drinking water missing in the trenches.
it turned out the revolution wasn’t on the cards.
It’s just that the regime has engaged in suicidal and criminal stupidity it’s now struggling to get out of.
He couldn’t give a damn about the Russian world, Russians in the Donbas, and the Donbas itself.
The pro-war crowd is more of a liability than an asset.
That’s when they launched into their rants.
That’s when it occurred to them that Putin-led elite would at one point iron things out,
negotiate a deal, and put the war on the back burner.
And there would no “reorientation to the war economy” and no “general mobilization.”
Nobody was going to punish the back-office generals
and nobody would be charged in pointless deaths on the battlefield.
The pro-war bloggers would soon get back to writing their social media blogs to an audience of 10K disgruntled old men,
a narrow audience that keeps freaking out over the war that nobody else appears to be interested in.
And that’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened to them
Putin’s state seems to have repeatedly proved that it’s not to be believed.
It would seem, it wasn’t the first time that those who were dumb enough
to be taking the mainstream media rah-rah at face values wound up hoodwinked.
But still there are people who get genuinely frustrated by this outcome.
Once the frustrations sets in, they begin whining and ranting.
That’s where this narrative cracks.
It turns out, if you’re pro-war, you aren’t pro-Putin.
It turns out Putin and his cronies aren’t their allies. It turns out, they’re homefront backstabbers.
What Ukrainians fail to destroy in combat action will be pilfered and lost by these guys.
The pro-war speakers’ whining is conducive to a growing audience.
Their whining is rooted in reality.
If you’re aware how this war is being waged, let alone if you’re an active participant,
you can’t stand the MoD spokesman’s updates claiming that the Russian army has destroyed more HIMARS systems than their total number.
You can’t stand Vladimir Solovyov’s calls to take Warsaw and Paris
and or Dmitry Kiselyov’s threat to nuke the British Isles.
Until June 24, there was a chance Putin didn’t quite get it.
But now there’s no way he doesn’t realize he’s single-handedly created unusual opposition,
a horde of disgruntled people whose disdain is directed more toward him than Ukraine.
This opposition runs it own media outlets and has its own army.
Bring a burning match closer to this fuel tank — and no Russian Guard roster will ever save you from the ensuing flames.
Granted, they failed to chop Prigozhin’s head off his shoulders.
Moreover, they failed to find and prosecute those who downed the Russian pilots.
But as for these keyboard warriors who decided that the freedom of speech and civic rights options
have been enabled exclusively for them, these can be easily canned.
Taking it out on those you can pummel with impunity as opposed to those hurt you is Putin’sn state’s trademark style.
A lot of people predicted things would develop along these lines.
No high-profile sinecures would be fired, something the pro-war crowd was dreaming of.
Instead, they’d lash out at the pro-war crowd.
Sure enough, currently, all these disgruntled patriots are a largely innocent bunch.
But the regime has learned its lessons the hard way.
The regime now knows that if they allow this kelp to procreate, they’ll reach a point where they’re powerful enough.
They’ll bite back the way that can only be settled in a negotiation.
That’s the best-case scenario, of course.
We don’t know if this can happen.
On the one hand, the sentiment filled with rage as well as the sense of humiliation and injustice reigns supreme in the militarist crowd.
Pro-war social media are brimming with these, and to many, these outlets are the only pathway to reality.
The official propaganda has been lost on those people.
On the other hand, the discontent is dispersed.
The only thing the leading pro-war bloggers and their readership can do together is whine.
Once they attempted joint action, like raising money for helmets or kevlars,
the result tends to be underwhelming.
The pro-war crowd’s principal job description is ranting.
When it rains, it pours when it comes to being hurt.
These people are reveling in this feeling of hurt and sharing it with one another.
And that’s your ballgame.
They have no organization, no leaders, and no goals.
Gherkin’s biggest brainchild is his Disgruntled Patriots Club that looks even worse than it sounds.
This is what reality looks like
But since when are the Kremlin dwellers preoccupied about this reality?
They recently had a close call and a lucky escape.
Notably, they weren’t threatened by liberals, foreign agents, or public enemies
but by their own offspring they’d been feeding with billions upon billions of dollars.
Clearly, they have no time for discussions
and can’t wait for that jingoist whining to devolve into a new mutiny.
They have to be stomped on before they can overgrow.
The Out Crowd
What we’ve just described is pretty self-evident.
That the scared state system will be torching everyone
whose unarmed head bobs up above the surface was predictable all along.
And yet, Igor Strelkov’s fate is quite telling.
Nine years ago, he was filling the shoes that had also been filled by Prigozhin until recently.
He operated proxy violence; he was an umbrella for the regular army
so that they could always deny their military presence.
But unlike Prigozhin, he wasn’t heavily into PR stunts and spin doctor stuff.
He didn’t know who he could rail against and when.
He didn’t know when to shut the trap and stay tight-lipped, either.
He doesn’t value human life — and the Russian government is perfectly okay with this trait of his.
The thing is, he’s serious about who’s the odd man out in a system that’s busy trying to screw you before you can screw them.
Prigozhin is an inherent part of the system.
He followed its rulebook, and he won.
He screwed everyone else and got away scot-free with billions sticking out of his pockets.
Strelkov, on the other hand, decided that the game involved observing certain principles.
He thought he was supposed to tell the truth the way he feels about it
and remind everyone of what the mainstream media were talking about last year.
Big mistake!
You mustn’t recall what happened last week.
You needn’t think that acts of public speaking have anything to do with reality.
Only those who understand the way things are survive.
They understand when they can be all pumped-up and call for a march on Kyiv
and when they should forget their Kyiv campaign plans for good.
This is akin to a business lunch menu.
Today, it includes fried people; tomorrow, they’re offering sauteed asparagus.
You don’t freak out over the fact that yesterday, they served dead bodies.
There’s no yesterday.
It’s a different shift. So, sauteed asparagus it is.
The sentence of the International Criminal Court may seem to be your security blanket.
It may seem to you that Putin won’t let the guy
that’s been declared as a criminal by all of his overseas enemies end up in a lockup in Russia.
He won’t score an own goal.
Strelkov wasn’t just one of his own lot.
There’s a document proving just that.
But hey, there’s no such thing as his own lot.
Or rather, there is, but it’s just that their status is volatile. It’s day-to-day.
If you’ve lost your way around, missed a conceptual shift,
and continue giving your higher-ups a daily earful,
like, “you said otherwise” or “that’s you’ve promised,”
ending up in custody will be a better outcome than taking a forced trip out of a window.
What we’re witnessing is an embarrassing end to a murderous hardliner
who has predictably lost to a gang of murderous thieves.
He was taken advantage of and screwed.
A pillager will always lose to a crook.
There’s not much that Strelkov’s tribe will realize who they’re dealing with before they’re busted.
Still, it’s a curious case for an inquisitive mind.
This news story is symptomatic of what the Russian state,
its ideology, and the war it’s waging are all about.
See you tomorrow!