Igor Girkin, a military blogger in Russia, just published his most recent tirade against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Former Russian intelligence operative Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was instrumental in both Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.
He has provided insightful but unfavorable analyses of Russia’s military missteps in Ukraine as well as his opinions on Putin and his officers’ military failings.
Girkin explained to a crowd in St. Petersburg how he predicted in May 2022 that Russia had already “failed” in a so-called “military special operation” because there was no mobilization taking place in a video released to his social media channel Telegram on Monday.
He claimed that as the war went on, Russian output had “collapsed,” citing the inability to obtain materials from abroad. The Russian “generals and bureaucrats” in charge of Moscow’s war effort were his next target. With these individuals in charge, he believed it was “impossible to conduct a real mobilization, a real preparation, or a real war.”
Putin announced a draft in September, but the call-up was “slowed down,” echoing the opinion of many military bloggers in Russia who believe that the nation should be put on a full war footing. Girkin thinks that there is a rift between the Russian military and its personnel.
Because of this, our president entirely abdicated his responsibility for overseeing the military special operation and handed it off to the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu.
