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Ukrainian Separatist Leader Zakharchenko Killed In Cafe Bombing
RFE/RL August 31, 2018
The leadership of the pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine has been thrown into disarray after the head of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic was killed in an explosion at a cafe designed to honor the separatists.
The death on August 31 of Aleksandr Zakharchenko at the Separ cafe -- a separatist-themed establishment featuring camouflage netting hanging from its eaves -- drove the rebel council to an emergency meeting and angered the separatists' backers in Moscow.
Zakharchenko's killing was the latest in a series of violent deaths of separatist officials and commanders in eastern Ukraine, where the Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the central government in Kyiv since 2014 in a war that has killed more than 10,300. Many of the assassinations have been blamed on fellow rebels.
The Donetsk News Agency said in a statement on its website that the 42-year-old Zakharchenko had been killed in an explosion in central Donetsk and that another separatist figure, Aleksandr Timofeyev, was injured in the blast and was in serious condition.
A reporter for the AFP news agency at the scene said police had cordoned off the block where the blast occurred.
Local officials said traffic to and from Donetsk had been suspended and that the start of the school year would be delayed across the separatist-controlled region because of the attack.
Russian state-run TASS news agency reported that the Donetsk rebels' ruling council had gone into an emergency meeting.
Russia's Interfax reported that Dmitry Trapeznikov, the first deputy prime minister, had been named as acting leader. Reuters earlier quoted a source as saying that Denis Pushilin, head of the rebel legislature, would be named temporary leader.
Russia's Foreign Ministry was quick to blame Ukrainian authorities for the attack, saying Kyiv had decided to engage in a "bloody fight."
The Kremlin later said that Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences for the "vile murder" and that Russia's state Investigative Committee was treating the killing as an act of "international terrorism."
However, Ukraine's security service said it believes the attack was a result of a conflict between "terrorists and their Russian sponsors."
"We do not exclude an attempt by the Russian special services to eliminate a rather odious figure who, according to the information we have, was meddlesome for the Russians," the security service was quoted by state media as saying.
The separatist movement has been plagued by infighting, with several leaders fleeing the region after saying they had been subject to threats from former comrades.
In February 2017, separatist commander Mikhail Tolstykh, 36, whose nom de guerre was Givi, died in an explosion in his office in Donetsk.
Another separatist commander -- Arseny Pavlov, known as Motorola -- was killed when a bomb exploded in an elevator in his apartment block in Donetsk in October 2016.
On January 1, 2015, Aleksandr Bednov, a separatist commander in Luhansk, was killed resisting arrest by fellow separatist authorities on charges he ran a torture chamber in the basement of a rebel-held building.
Since April 2014, more than 10,300 people have been killed in fighting between Kyiv's forces and the pro-Russia separatists who control parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Moscow has denied providing the separatist forces with weapons despite what Kyiv and NATO say is evidence proving that it has done so.
Cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict -- have regularly failed to hold.
Russia in 2014 also seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
The United States and European Union condemned Russia's actions in Ukraine and have slapped a series of sanctions against Moscow in reaction.
Zakharchenko, a former coal-mine electrician who was born in Donetsk in 1976, was sworn into office as the head of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic on November 4, 2014.
At one point, Zakharchenko announced plans to create a country called Malorossia -- Little Russia -- encompassing all of Ukraine with its capital in Donetsk.
However, in August 2017, Zakharchenko called off the plan, saying it "was rejected by many" after it was met with derision and criticism Kyiv and the West and did not receive the Kremlin's support.
With reporting by Reuters, Interfax, and TASS
Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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