Ukraine is putting a $100,000 bounty on Igor Girkin accused of attacking flight MH17

Ukrainian intelligence has publicly labeled Igor Girkin, the Russian nationalist accused of downing airliner MH17, as a terrorist and has publicly put a bounty on his head.

The main news directorate of the Facebook page of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine set Girkin’s bounty at $100,000.

Girkin boasted that in the early months of the 2014 conflict, as the leader of Kremlin forces in Sloviansk, eastern Ukraine, he “triggered the withdrawal of the war,” according to a financial times Report.

In 2020, Girkin claimed “moral responsibility” for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people. However, he refused to admit to shooting down the civilian jet.

“The main intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine guarantees payment of $100,000 for the transfer of Igor Girkin (Strelkov) to Ukrainian captivity,” reads the Facebook post (via Google Translate).

“It is known that one of the most famous Russian terrorists decided to renew his participation in the war against our state.

“Igor Girkin (Strelkov) is a Russian terrorist, former so-called ‘Minister of Defense of the DPR’. Currently, the SBU and the Prosecutor General’s Office have filed a number of cases against Girkin for terrorist activities, torture, murder and assault on state sovereignty

“Also announced by the Netherlands and [internationally] searched [for the] Case of civilian Boeing 777 flight Mh17 shot down. No war criminal will escape punishment.”

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Girkin, who frequently uses his pseudonym Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, criticized Russia’s tactics and failures.

In a post on his Telegram account on Sunday, he commented on the evolution of some of the recent developments in the conflict.

He began his post by observing that Ukraine’s armed forces were continuing to launch artillery attacks on Belgorod, a region of Russia just across the border from the city of Kharkiv. This front of the conflict is “more than mature – almost at the level of Donetsk,” according to a Google translation of his post.

“Instead of trying to push the enemy away from the border again (after the magnificent ‘regrouping’, which was carried out in September), our troops continue to carry out absolutely senseless offensive actions in all respects and accompanied by heavy losses in the direction of Bakhmut and west of Donetsk , to which the enemy, concentrating the main attack forces on other fronts, does not pay much attention,” Girkin wrote.

The “regrouping” referred to by Girkin was a successful counteroffensive launched by Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region in early September, liberating several key areas previously under Russian occupation. It was one of the greatest successes yet for Ukraine’s defenders and a major blow to Russian invasion efforts.

news week has contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Russia for an opinion.