Alexander Zakharchenko

Alexander Vladimirovich Zakharchenko (26 June 1976 – 31 August 2018) was a Ukrainian separatist leader who was the head of state and Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, a self-proclaimed state and Russian-backed rebel group which declared independence from Ukraine on 11 May 2014.

In 2010, Zakharchenko became head of the Donetsk branch of OPLOT, a pro-Russian militant organization established in Kharkiv by Yevgeny Zhilin.

Zakharchenko was appointed Prime Minister in August 2014 after his predecessor Alexander Borodai resigned, and went on to win the early November 2014 election for the position.

On 16 April 2014, 20 members of Oplot (including Zakharchenko), armed with clubs, rifles and some automatic weapons, occupied the offices of Donetsk city council, demanding a referendum on the status of the region.

By April 2014, he was the commander of a local militia in Donetsk (Oplot ).

The members of this militia were mainly from civic and martial arts groups.

Zakharchenko was appointed the "military commandant of Donetsk" on 16 May 2014.

From May 2014, Zakharchenko played a leading role in the insurgency against Ukraine's central government.

On 22 July 2014, he was wounded in the arm during a fight against Ukrainian government forces at Kozhevnia.

In late August 2014, the DPR Ministry of Defence announced Zakharchenko's promotion to major general.

Zakharchenko succeeded Alexander Borodai as Prime Minister on 7 August 2014.

Borodai then became the DPR Deputy Prime Minister.

According to Borodai, Donbas native Zakharchenko succeeded him for a Russian government effort "to try to show the West that the uprising was a grassroots phenomenon".

Borodai claims that he personally recommended Zakharchenko as Prime Minister.

In September 2014, Zakharchenko was the lead negotiator for the DPR at the Minsk Protocol, which agreed to a peace plan for the war in Donbas.

During the 2014 Donetsk parliamentary elections, Zakharchenko won the prime ministership with 78.93% of the vote.

The day after the elections, the head of Oplot organization Evgeniy Zhylin gave an interview to the Russian television channel TV Rain where he told how Zakharchenko was appointed as a head of Donetsk branch of Oplot and how his candidacy as a leader of the DPR was promoted from Moscow.

During the 2014 Donbas parliamentary elections campaign, Zakharchenko told potential voters that he wanted pensions to be "higher than in Poland."

Zakharchenko said this was feasible because Donetsk is very rich, "like the United Arab Emirates [...] [the Donetsk people] have coal, metallurgy, natural gas [. . .] [t]he difference between [them] and the Emirates is they don't have a war [in the Emirates] and [Donetsk does]."

Zakharchenko promised to build "a normal state, a good one, a just one. [Donetsk] boys died for this, civilians are still being killed for this".

He has stated: “…this generation is being raised on democracy, which implies that a family can have two fathers or two mothers.

To me, this is categorically unacceptable.”

Zakharchenko was in favour of the death penalty.

In October 2014, Zakharchenko declared that he can shoot at any Ukrainian city with a clear conscience.

In an interview he said: "I don't care at all. If I don't shoot in Avdiivka because my people live there, then I can shoot in any other Ukrainian city, and I won't feel sorry for the civilians or anyone else. This is a different war. You came to kill us, just to destroy us. So you will get what you are doing here".

During the war in Donbas there were many cases of forced disappearances in the Donetsk People's Republic.

Zakharchenko said that his forces detained up to five "Ukrainian subversives" every day.

In February 2015, Zakharchenko, representing the DPR, agreed to the Minsk II peace treaty, calling it a "major victory for the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics".

After signing the Minsk agreements, Zakharchenko stated that should the Ukrainian authorities violate the terms of the agreements, fail to withdraw from the border, or fail to release the Donetsk POWs, he would take Kharkiv and destroy the Ukrainian battalions in Debaltseve.

Zakharchenko stated that he had no intention on adhering to the ceasefire within the Debaltseve region.

He was wounded in the leg on 17 February 2015 during the closing stages of the Battle of Debaltseve.

In January 2016, he described the battle in July 2014 for the village of Kozhevnia as "a milestone for me", saying that it was "our first offensive. Unfortunately, in the course of fighting we practically destroyed this village. By burning down houses, we saved our lives and the lives of our people."

In an interview with Zakhar Prilepin on Tsargrad TV in late 2016, he said that Britain must be conquered, which would usher in a "Golden Age for Russia".

Prilepin, a Russian writer and political activist of the National Bolshevik Party, stated that Zakharchenko was among the top five most popular politicians in Ukraine and could be elected the President of Ukraine.

In 2016, Prilepin published a book in which Alexander Zakharchenko is the protagonist.

Zakharchenko was killed in 2018 when a bomb exploded in a café that he frequently visited.

Zakharchenko graduated from technical college.

He then worked as a mine electrician before opening a business in the mining industry.

He studied with the law institute of the Interior Ministry.

He was godfather to Alexander Timofeyev's (ru) children.