Unreal colonel

His paintings should speak for an artist, his performance on the field for a football player, and his results on the battlefield for a military leader. Every time I now come across speeches in the press by Igor Strelkov-Girkin, I want to tell him: “After a fight, don’t wave your fists!” Strelkov had every opportunity to show off his fighting talents last summer, and what did he end up doing? He left Slavyansk, he wanted to give up Donetsk - then why now waste your time talking about all sorts of nonsense?! Mr. Strelkov-Girkin, you have already dissuaded yourself, if you please, keep quiet!

In Russian football, the “expert” Alexander Bubnov is widely known - an aged former mediocre defender who tirelessly pours unflattering epithets on modern players, evaluates performers on a scale that is only understandable to him and never offers any constructive advice. It seems that Strelkov has decided to occupy Bubnov’s niche in the Russian political agenda and become a universal laughing stock. Strelkov now reminds me of an elderly security guard, vegetating on shift in some office center, nostalgic for his years of military service and rudely addressing strangers with the question “Have you fought?”

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The best times are behind us, and the future does not promise anything good. The man simply did not find himself in civilian life. Of course, being under constant shelling for several months does not pass without leaving a trace, and Strelkov, after everything he has experienced, needs long-term psychological rehabilitation under the supervision of specialists. But so far, unfortunately, it is not customary for us to trust our mental health to professionals. Instead of lying on a psychoanalyst’s couch and venting all his hidden fears with violent fantasies, Strelkov visits television broadcasts and appears on the pages of newspapers, polluting the information space with streams of his significantly deformed consciousness.

With his extravagant statements, Strelkov is rapidly wasting his social capital. His popular popularity rating is falling and approaching zero. Last summer, Strelkov should have laid low, not appeared at press conferences, taken a vow of silence and created an aura of mystery around his person, as the writer Salinger did in his time. Such a position would certainly turn out to be dividends for him in the future, but Strelkov is not at all experienced in the technologies of long-term popularization of brands.

Because of the broadcast of his obsession with the “drain of Novorossiya,” Strelkov turned in the public consciousness from a hero into a clique and a holy fool. There was a real colonel, but he became a mustachioed nanny. How can one take seriously judgments about Donetsk from a person who has not been there for a year?! Strelkov doesn’t realize that, appearing on the next broadcast, he looks from the outside like a tipsy lout in a vest, sitting on a bench near the entrance and putting on a port-wine bravado in front of the neighboring housewives, accompanied by judgments about problems of universal importance, about the nature of which he has no idea concepts.

It’s time to finally understand that all of Strelkov’s current statements about what is happening in Donbass are the cries of an offended person who finds himself in a political offside and suffering from the inability to adapt to peaceful life after the war. Girkin should understand that his war in Donbass has long since ended, and abstract himself from what is now happening in the land of waste heaps. The man has a young wife, some fame, his arms and legs are intact - Girkin can still improve his life if he finally comes to his senses and stops acting as a television jester.

It’s time for Strelkov to remember that silence is golden and return to the business of military reconstruction. It’s better to teach young people how to use weapons in patriotic clubs than to shock society with ridiculous statements.

We have to admit that the political expert and military observer from Strelkov is useless. The milk of wisdom flowed down his mustache, but did not enter his mouth. Today Girkin is not a real colonel; a buffoon-chatterer, lagging behind the current agenda, whose opinion journalists are interested in only out of old memory.