Former Russian commander Igor Girkin said in a video posted on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military is currently not strong enough to defend the Kremlin.
Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, made the condemning evaluation of the Russian military in a video posted on his Telegram channel.
Although Girkin was reportedly instrumental in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and was at one time responsible for commanding Russian militants in Ukraine’s Donbas region, he has since become a vocal critic of Putin’s current military campaign against Ukraine.
In a sign of how strongly he’s opposed to Russia’s current war strategy, he co-founded a nationalist group known as the Club of Angry Patriots in April. The newly-founded group announced that it was entering into politics with the focus of addressing Russia’s military failures in Ukraine earlier this month.
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Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, shared a translated clip on Twitter on Friday of Girkin’s recent comments about Russia’s military.
“If we keep fighting like this, we won’t be able to hold [the southern Russian city] Rostov-on-Don in a year,” Girkin said, according to Gerashchenko’s translation.
“Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov is very gloomy in his evaluation of the Russian army, just like Prigozhin,” Gerashchenko wrote in the caption for this tweet, referencing Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has also been vocal about his complaints of Putin’s military.
While speaking of Putin’s military forces, Girkin said that “right now they’re not that strong” before adding that “in the long run, if we go on fighting like we are fighting now, we won’t be able to hold anything.”
Terrorist Girkin-Strelkov is very gloomy in his evaluation of the Russian army, just like Prigozhin.
Although, personally, it’s more interesting to watch Prigozhin, he’s much more expressive. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/nmjKcX6wr7
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 18, 2023
“We won’t even hold the Kremlin back in time,” he said.
The army veteran then brought up the alleged drone attack that Russia said occurred on May 3 and criticized Putin for what he characterized as lack of an appropriate response.
According to Russian authorities, two drones attempted to strike the Kremlin in a failed assassination attempt on Putin, who was not in the building at the time. Russia blamed Ukraine for the alleged attack while also claiming the United States was involved. Both Ukraine and the U.S. denied the allegations.
“The Kremlin palace has already been attacked, and we have no reaction to it,” Girkin said, per Gerashchenko. “If it doesn’t even make the president, the commander-in-chief, become the performer of his constitutional functions, then what are you talking about here?”
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment.