The ex-Russian officer Igor Guirkinclaimed by the Ukrainian and Dutch authorities for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014was detained today by Russian security forces.
Guirkin, aka “Strelkov”was arrested shortly before noon at his home in the Russian capital, as confirmed by his lawyer and police sources to the RBC newspaper. His wife explained on social networks that a criminal case for extremism has been opened against Guirkin, according to article 282 of the penal code.
The source specified that the Investigation Committee carried out a search of the address of “Strelkov”, which He has been very critical from the beginning with the conduction of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine through a program on social networks, collects Efe.
He also harshly criticized the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, and predicted in early June that the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, would lead a military rebellion, which finally occurred on the 24th of that month.
[Putin se lanza a una purga en el ejército mientras suena ya Kiriyenko como posible sucesor]
According to preliminary data, the former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer was arrested after being denounced by a member of Wagner, a group with which he also had his ups and downs.
In October 2022, Guirkin went to Donbas to directly participate in the fighting, but returned to Moscow two months later after acknowledging that said attempt “was not successful”.
Guirkin, for whose head kyiv has offered a $100,000 bounty, led an armed uprising in Donbas in 2014 that led to a war between pro-Russian separatist militias and the Ukrainian army. At the time, he acknowledged to EFE that the FSB he was strictly forbidden to leave the country for security reasons.
For his involvement in the downing of MH17 in the Donetsk region, “Strelkov” was sentenced in November by the Dutch Justice to life imprisonment.
“Receiving a life sentence from the enemies is like a medal,” he told EFE in the middle of the trial.
