Ukrainian separatist leader slain in bombing
MOSCOW— The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian-backed separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine, was killed Friday when a bomb exploded at a restaurant where he was having dinner, an attack that threatened to set off an escalation of the Ukraine war. The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, blamed the Ukrainian government, saying that “there is every reason to suggest that the Kyiv regime stands behind this murder.” And Russia’s speaker of Parliament suggested that because the victim, Alexander Zakharchenko, was one of the parties who signed a peace agreement with Ukraine called Minsk II, that pact was no longer valid.
Ukrainians say Zakharchenko, a former electrician, filled a mostly figurehead position for the Russian security service agencies that manage and fi- nance the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and they attributed his death to infighting in the rebel ranks or a Russian targeted killing. Zakharchenko became the latest in a long list of separatist leaders to die in mysterious assassinations. He had reportedly dined often at the restaurant, which was paradoxically called Separ, short for separatist.
Photographs from the scene posted on social media sites showed blown-out windows and armed men milling about. The blast killed Zakharchenko and wounded three others, including his dining companion, the minister of finance of the self-declared People’s Republic.