Igor Girkin escaped justice for downing flight MH17 but goes to jail after criticising Russia's leader.
If you shoot down a packed Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, you get praised. If you insult Putin, you're sent to prison. That's life in a hegemonic dictatorship which is Russia these days.
The last time I saw Igor Girkin was five years ago in the stairwell of a Moscow news agency. "Would you consider giving me an interview?" I asked. "No," he replied sharply and scurried away. I saw him again today. No stairwell. This time, Girkin was in a caged dock surrounded by police in the Moscow City Court. Along with other media we were allowed in to film him for just one minute before the end of his trial. A police dog kept barking. Girkin found that amusing. The verdict less so. Minutes later he was found guilty on extremism charges and sentenced to four years in a penal colony. This wasn't his first conviction. In The Hague in 2022, in absentia, Girkin was found guilty of the murder of 298 people: the passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. The Boeing jet had been shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 by Russian-controlled forces in the early stages of Russia's war there. Girkin was one of three men sentenced to life imprisonment. A judgement he ignored. [ ... ] Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ultranationalist Girkin became a prominent pro-war blogger. He became increasingly critical of the way the Russian authorities were waging the war: not hard enough, in his view. He founded a hard line nationalist movement called The Club of Angry Patriots. His problems began when he started to take that anger out on President Vladimir Putin. Public criticisms of the Russian president turned to insults. In a post last year, Girkin described Putin as "a non-entity" and "a cowardly waste of space". A few days later he was arrested. Now he's been tried and convicted.
Four years is a rather light sentence for dissent in Putin's Russia. Journalists Vladimir Kara-Murza was recently sentenced to 25 years and Ruslan Ushakov is serving 8 years – just to name two.
