The Russian military blogger Igor Girkin has been hammering away at the Kremlin’s warfare in Ukraine for months.
He believes that Russia is not tough enough in its grip on its neighbours, and wants tougher warfare than the Kremlin itself.
In a video published on Telegram on Monday morning, he addresses the Russian president, whom he describes as a “poor”.
– For Putin, there may be a desire to flee when the situation really becomes critical. The mental category he belongs to means that in such a situation he will probably panic, and then he may try to run away to save his life, much like Yanukovych, says Girkin in the video, according to The evening paper.
Girkin is a former colonel in the Russian intelligence service FSB and an officer in the Russian army. He has a large following on social media, but experts disagree on how much influence he has.
Lieutenant Colonel Joakin Paasikivi is surprised by his latest move.
– I no longer believe that he is a valve, given that he criticizes Putin directly. It is incomprehensible that he is still alive, says Paasikivi to Aftonbladet.
You were also surprised by Stefan Ingvarsson, analyst at the Center for Eastern European Studies.
– Here Girkin crosses the extreme red line – which consists in not criticizing the president – when he compares him to the former Ukrainian president, he tells the newspaper.
Ukraine’s pro-Russian ex-president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in the popular uprising in 2014 and fled to Russia. In the same year, Russian forces took the Krym peninsula, and the war in eastern Ukraine broke out.
Yanukovych, who was considered particularly corrupt, is now 71 years old and living in exile in Russia. In Ukraine, he was sentenced in absentia to 13 years in prison for treason.
