Girkin admitted responsibility for sparking the Donbas War in eastern Ukraine when, in April 2014, he led a group of armed Russian militants who seized Sloviansk.

After his service in the war, he returned to Russia in 2014 as a political activist, reportedly calling for the liberal part of the Russian elite to be destroyed, which would shift the power balance in favor of militarists and securocrats.

[1] According to The New York Times, "his ideological rigidity precedes any connections he has to Russia's security services, stretching back at least to his days at the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives.

[29] In 2014 Anonymous International disclosed what it said were Girkin's personal emails,[30][31] revealing that he had served in the FSB for 18 years from 1996 to March 2013, including in Chechnya from 1999 to 2005, The Moscow Times reported.

[37] The website of Chechnya's official human rights ombudsman lists several residents of Khatuni who went missing in 2001 (Beslan Durtayev and Supyan Tashayev) as having been kidnapped from their homes and taken to the 45th DRR base by the officers known as "Colonel Proskuryn and Strelkov Igor".

[38][39] Another entry lists the missing person Beslan Taramov as abducted in 2001 in the village of Elistandzhi by the 45th DRR servicemen led by "Igor Strelko (nicknamed Strikal)".

In an interview on 22 January 2015, he explained that Russian media falsely portrayed Crimeans as supporting the annexation; Girkin said a majority of the local administration, law enforcement and army were opposed to it.

He said nothing about his own background, denied receiving weapons or ammunition from Russia,[3][4] and announced that his militia would not release the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers that it had taken hostage unless pro-Russia activists were first freed by the Ukrainian government.

[66] On 28 April, the EU sanctioned "Igor Strelkov" as a GRU staff member believed to be a coordinator of armed actions and a security assistant to Crimea's Sergey Aksyonov.

[82] The ultimately successful withdrawal of a considerable force of separatists from the besieged Sloviansk to the large industrial center of Donetsk caused some backlash in Ukraine against the army leadership.

[89] A rumor inside Russian ultranationalist circles alleged Russia's powerful "grey cardinal" figure Vladislav Surkov conspired with east Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov to organize a campaign against "Strelkov" as well as against the Eurasianism ideologue Alexander Dugin.

[90] On 10 July 2014, news outlet Mashable reported finding execution orders three days earlier for Slavov and Lukyanov in Girkin's abandoned Sloviansk headquarters.

[91] On 24 July, Ukrainian authorities exhumed several corpses from a mass grave site on the grounds of a children's hospital near the Jewish cemetery in Slovyansk, which might contain as many as 20 bodies of those executed by order of Girkin.

On 19 July the country's biggest newspaper De Telegraaf included Girkin's photo in the front page collage of pro-Russian rebel leaders under the one-word headline "Murderers" ("Moordenaars").

"[110] On 17 November 2022, following a trial in absentia in the Netherlands, Girkin, along with another Russian and a Ukrainian, was found guilty of murdering all 298 people on board flight MH17 by participating in shooting it down.

[114] According to ITAR-TASS news agency on Wednesday, 13 August 2014, Girkin was seriously wounded the previous day in fierce fighting in the pro-Russian rebel held territories of Eastern Ukraine, and was described to be in "grave" condition.

[119] On 22 August a former rebel Anton Raevsky ("Nemetz") said in an interview in Rostov-on-Don that Girkin and his supporters are being cleansed from the DNR by the FSB, because of this insufficient compliance with Kremlin's policy on the republic.

[121] In November 2014 in an interview for "Moscow Speaking" radio, Girkin said that "the existence of Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics in their current form, with the low-profile but still bloody war, is definitely convenient for USA in the first place, and only for them, because they are the ulcer that divides Russia and Ukraine".

[122] Later in November in an interview for Zavtra newspaper Girkin stated that the war in Donbas was launched by his detachment despite both Ukrainian government and local combatants having avoided an armed confrontation before.

"[129][130] Piontkovsky adds, "Putin has stolen the ideology of the Russian Reich from the domestic Hitlerites, he has preventively burned them down, using their help to do so, hundreds of their most active supporters in the furnace of the Ukrainian Vendée.

"[129][130] In his interview with Radio Liberty, Piontkovsky says, maybe the meaning of the operation conducted by Putin is to reveal all these potential passionate leaders of social revolt, send them to Ukraine and burn them in the furnace of the Ukrainian Vendée.

[132] He stated that Igor Bezler's militants in particular acted independently, the so-called "Russian Orthodox Army" had split in half, and other forces represented a patchwork of various unrelated groups.

[133] In a January 2015 interview for Anna News, Girkin said that in his opinion "Russia is currently at state of war", since the volunteers who arrive to Donbas "are being supplied with arms and shells".

"[137] Girkin said "the Russian National Movement fully rejects President Vladimir Putin's regime and calls for an end to the current climate of fear and intimidation of Russia's citizens".

The party has called for "strict quota system for migrant workers from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus" and the cancelling of laws on internet control.

Girkin has a pro-war position, but has been noted for criticisms directed against the Russian military and the Ministry of Defence, including the defense minister Sergei Shoigu, in how the invasion has been unsuccessful, inefficient and insufficient.

[140] On 21 April Girkin raised the opinion that "without at least a partial mobilization in the Russian Federation, it will be impossible and highly dangerous to launch a deep strategic offensive against the so-called Ukraine".

[147] He also said that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu should be executed by firing squad and called for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in order "to drive 20 million refugees to Europe.

[154] After Girkin declined, Prigozhin accused him of having made a secret deal in 2014 with Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov to surrender Sloviansk to Ukraine in exchange for money and safe passage to Donetsk.

"[158] On 18 July 2023, Girkin urged Putin to transfer power "to someone truly capable and responsible",[159] saying that "For 23 years, the country was led by a lowlife who managed to 'blow dust in the eyes' of a significant part of the population.