Igor Strelkov’s Statement, June 22, 2014

Translated from English by Gleb Bazov / Edited by S. Naylor
Original: http://icorpus.ru/zayavlenie-ot-strelkova-22-06-2014-2003/

I am categorically opposed to any “cult of personality” which some have started to sculpt out of my persona on various websites with a “patriotic” and “pseudo-patriotic” thematic. Actually, and frankly speaking, it is extremely unpleasant to read things about myself that are obviously devoid of reality. Many of the skills that are attributed to me I do not possess, not to any degree at all, and my “military successes,” for the most part, are explained not by any such “talents,” but by the enemy’s blatant ignorance in military affairs, its passivity and indecision.

I will be frank – I get absolutely no “rush” either from posters with an “idealized visage” or from fancy phrases like “an iron commander of iron strelkovites.” I can’t stand tarasconades [Note 1: desperate bravados], and such bravados are bursting through the seams already. Perhaps another, in my place, would have been convinced, but don’t expect it from me. I think of myself with measured skepticism, and I know equally well my accomplishments and my many limitations. I have no intention of engaging in politics in its pure form (I won’t even mention that this is neither the time nor the place for politics) and it is inappropriate to build, on the basis of my fleeting popularity, various “castles in the sky” or far-reaching plans in the genre of “patriotic fantasy”.

I especially cringe at the fact that, while a real war is ongoing (it’s irrelevant whether some like this term or not – the war is already upon us), my public statements are being used by way of an “ideological bomb,” aimed against the existing government.

I have written already, and will repeat again: having taken Crimea, Putin began a revolution from the top. The progress of [this revolution] is very, very difficult, it continues, but with constant vacillations from side to side. But it continues. And if we do not support [this revolution] now, its failure will sweep aside both him and the country. Moreover, during war, mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief is tantamount to a betrayal of the Fatherland. The “way of Guchkov-Milyukov-Lvov et al.,” who, in their own time, also implemented a rebellion in the name of “saving Russia,” led to a result we know well.

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Note 1: Tarasconism or Tarasconade – a Russian-language Gallicism derived from the name of the city of Tarascon in Provence, France, which became famous after the publication of Alphonse Daudet’s “Tartarin of Tarascon,” the city of desperate braggarts. In other words, a tarasconade/tarasconism is a speech by a desperate braggart, alternatively, a desperate bravado.