Igor Girkin, alias Strelkov, was sentenced to four years in prison for inciting extremism. The Russian ultranationalist wants to get out of the prison camp as quickly as possible – and back to the front.
His lawyer Alexander Molokov announced on Wednesday that Girkin was seeking his release so that he could fight in Russia's "special military operation" In the West, Girkin is considered a war criminal. In 2022, a court in the Netherlands sentenced him to life in prison in absentia for shooting down passenger MH17 over the Donbass.. Girkin aims to incorporate eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation under the name “Novorossiya” (New Russia). He is also said to be responsible for other war crimes in Donbass, including the shooting down of MH17 and the capture of small towns and villages in eastern Ukraine in 2014. He later boasted that he had started the war, reports Die Die Zeit Zeit.