Ukraine separatists report death of leader Zakharchenko
MOSCOW — The leader of the Russia-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region was killed Friday by an explosion at a café, the separatists’ news agency said Friday.
Rebel news agency DAN said the explosion killed Alexander Zakharchenko, 42, the prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic. The separatist government’s revenue minister, Alexander Timofeev, was severely injured in the blast, Russian news agencies reported.
The Donetsk People’s Republic, along with a separatist republic in neighbouring Luhansk, has fought Ukrainian forces since 2014, the same year Zakharchenko became DPR’s prime minister. More than 10,000 people have died in the armed conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded Zakharchenko as “a true people’s leader” and promised residents of Donetsk that “Russia always will be with you.”
The café in the city of Donetsk that was hit by the explosion, named Separ, was separatist themed and had camouflage netting hanging from its eaves, recent photographs show.
It was not clear if a bomb caused the blast or it resulted from something else. Russia’s Interfax news agency cited local sources as saying suspects had been detained, but there was no official confirmation.
Denis Pushilin, the speaker of the separatists’ parliament, blamed Ukrainian forces for the explosion, calling it “the latest aggression from the Ukrainian side,” according to DAN.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Security Service, Elena Gitlyanskaya, said, “The Ukrainian special services don’t have any kind of connection to this.”
There have been several assassinations or attempted slayings of prominent rebels in recent years. It never was established if pro-Kyiv attackers were responsible or if the violence resulted from factional disputes within the rebel ranks or Moscow’s possible desire to eliminate individuals it found inconvenient.
Some prominent separatists who have been targeted are former Luhansk leader Igor Plotnitsky, who was severely injured in 2016 when a bomb exploded near his car, and fighter Mikhail Tolstykh, whose office is believed to have been hit by a rocket.