{"id":13451,"date":"2018-09-01T01:29:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T01:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13451"},"modified":"2018-09-01T01:29:13","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T01:29:13","slug":"alexander-zakharchenko-killed-in-donetsk-cafe-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13451","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Zakharchenko killed in Donetsk cafe explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A key separatist leader in eastern Ukraine<\/a> has been killed in a blast at a coffee shop\u00a0in Donetsk, according to rebels.<\/p>\n

The explosion on Friday fatally wounded\u00a0<\/span>Alexander Zakharchenko,\u00a0head of the self-declared\u00a0<\/span>Donetsk People’s Republic, which\u00a0has been pushing for independence since 2014 after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Russia<\/a> accused Ukraine of assassinating the 42-year-old, but Kiev said it had nothing to do with the explosion and blamed separatist infighting.<\/p>\n

Zakharchenko “received injuries incompatible with life as a result of an explosion in the centre of Donetsk”, the separatist administration said in a statement.\u00a0It added that the blast also injured Alexander Timofeyev,\u00a0the deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed republic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the killing a “dastardly” crime aimed at destabilising a fragile regional peace.<\/p>\n

“I expect that the organisers and executors of this crime will get the deserved punishment,” he said in a telegram of condolences released by the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

“Zakharchenko was with his colleagues at the cafe when the bomb went off,”\u00a0said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from the Russian capital, Moscow.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>“He is the only confirmed fatality so far from that explosion.”<\/p>\n

Challands added Donetsk was in lockdown following the blast.<\/p>\n

“Nobody is allowed in and nobody is allowed out,” he said.<\/p>\n

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state body that handles major crimes, said it was treating the killing as “an act of international terrorism”.<\/p>\n

‘Bloody fight’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Russian-backed rebels threw off Ukrainian central rule in an armed uprising after pro-Western leaders opposed by Moscow came to power in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in 2014.<\/p>\n

A shaky internationally-brokered ceasefire has been in force since 2015, halting large-scale fighting, though there are still frequent outbreaks of shooting incidents on the front line between the separatists and Ukrainian forces.<\/p>\n

Russia’s foreign ministry said it had every reason to believe Kiev was responsible for Zakharchenko’s death, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Rossiya-24 state television station.<\/p>\n

Zakharchenko’s death shows that Kiev has decided to engage in a “bloody fight” and has passed on its promises of seeking peace, she said.<\/p>\n

In Kiev, a spokeswoman for the state security service, Yelena Gitlyanskaya, dismissed Moscow’s accusations.<\/p>\n

“According to our information, this was the result of internal fighting which has already been continuing for years between the terrorists and their Russian sponsors,” she said.<\/p>\n

Michael Bociurkiw, a global affairs analyst and former spokesman for the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said throwing blame at Ukraine “is a standard line out of the Russian playbook”.<\/p>\n

“This looks like an internal operation because for the past few weeks and months,\u00a0Zakharchenko<\/span> has been critical of some of his colleagues and deputies in the so-called DPR parliament,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview from the Canadian town of Sidney, in British Colombia. “So, I think the writing was on the wall for him.”<\/p>\n

\n
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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A traffic policeman blocks a road near the cafe where Zakharchenko was killed [Alexander Ermochenko\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Coalmine electrician to rebel leader<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Zakharchenko, a former coal mine electrician, joined pro-Russian separatists in an armed uprising in Donetsk in 2014 and sold his business to help fund the movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

He took the reins as the leader of the\u00a0Donetsk Republic in November 2014\u00a0<\/span>from a number of Russians, in a bid to show that Ukraine’s separatist movement wasn’t a Russian-led operation.<\/p>\n

Other rebel leaders say he was handpicked for the role by Moscow. A vote held by separatists confirmed him in office.<\/p>\n

Zakharchenko introduced Soviet-style military parades with tanks in Donetsk and usually wore military fatigues, despite his political role.<\/p>\n

In his statement on Friday, Putin lauded\u00a0Zakharchenko as<\/span>\u00a0“a true people’s leader, a brave and resolute person and a patriot”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He proposed the creation of a new country called “Malorossia” or “Little Russia”, encompassing Ukraine, with its capital in Donetsk.<\/p>\n

“I’ve met him as part of the OSCE, and the one thing about him is that he always had a lot of firepower around him and an unmistakably firm handshake as well,” said\u00a0Bociurkiw.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past, he said had been the target of several assassination attempts, accusing Ukraine of trying to kill him in an explosion back in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A key separatist leader in eastern Ukraine has been killed in a blast at a coffee shop\u00a0in Donetsk, according to rebels. The explosion on Friday fatally wounded\u00a0Alexander Zakharchenko,\u00a0head of the self-declared\u00a0Donetsk People’s Republic, which\u00a0has been pushing for independence since 2014 after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Russia accused Ukraine of assassinating the 42-year-old, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}