Former Defense Minister of the self-proclaimed “DPR” Igor Girkin (Strelkov) on Sunday, August 14, commented on media reports about his detention in annexed Crimea.

“I have not been in the bullpen and I do not intend to. Sooner or later I will certainly be at the front (this war, as I warned in advance, will be long and difficult). But not now” he wrote on his page on the social network VKontakte and in a post on Telegram.

A day earlier, the anti-war channel Telegram Sower of the Wind reported that Igor Girkin (Strelkov), a former commander of armed detachments of pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, had been detained in Russia-annexed Crimea. He was there on a false passport in the name of Sergei Runov and tried to cross Crimea into the war zone, the message’s authors wrote. Photos of Girkin with a shaved mustache were also published, as was the passport with which they said he was detained.

The arrest of the former separatist leader was also reported by his colleague Alexander Zhuchkovsky. In a statement posted on Telegram, he indicated that Girkin “really tried to get to the front, but he was detained in Crimea”. Zhuchkovsky wrote that, at the same time, the former separatist leader did not set “any political goals” but would only personally participate in hostilities. According to Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to the President’s Chief of Staff, Igor Girkin was released shortly after his arrest and allowed to leave for the Kherson region.

Bellingcat and The Insider Already Reported Girkin’s Fake Passport

In July, the Bellingcat investigation team and The Insider reported that Girkin was using fake passports issued by Russian security services in the name of Sergei Runov. For the first time, a passport with that name was used to buy a ticket from Moscow to St. Petersburg in November 2014. At least once the passport was reissued.

Igor Girkin, using the pseudonym Strelkov, took part in the annexation of Crimea in early 2014. After the so-called “referendum”, he left the peninsula and appeared in Donbass, where until August of the same year he led armed pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region. and announced the creation of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” on his side. So Girkin, who calls himself “a retired FSB colonel”, left Donbass and returned to Russia. He is one of the defendants in the ongoing trial in the Netherlands in the case of the crash of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing over Donbass in the summer of 2014.