ZAKHAR SNE NCO

The famous Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, the author of the world famous photograph of Che Guevara “Heroic Guerrilla,” died in Paris in 2001, but if he were alive today, he would probably go to Donetsk to capture Alexander Zakharchenko on film.

Alberto Korda, who was Fidel Castro's personal photographer, loved to take portraits of charismatic revolutionaries. He was attracted by daring rebels who dared to challenge the American world order and took up arms to protect their native land from the Yankees and their tame henchmen.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Zakharchenko does not have a beard, curly resinous locks and a beret with a five-pointed star, but this does not make his image any less attractive than the canonical face of Che Guevara. Half a century later, the visualization of folk heroes has also changed.

Alexander Zakharchenko is the personification of the phrase of the brilliant Russian writer Andrei Platonov, “Without me, the people are incomplete.” He came to power straight from the midst of the people, and emerged from the crowd to take the role of leader of the region at a most difficult historical moment. There is no diplomatic floridity or political resourcefulness in his speeches. Zakharchenko speaks publicly, in common people’s language.

If, among accessories, Che Guevara is associated with a beret, then when remembering Zakharchenko, the green cap in which he gave an interview to television during the storming of Debaltsevo in winter immediately comes to mind. Appearing in public on crutches, Zakharchenko becomes like a WWII veteran who has walked thousands of kilometers off-road and taken dozens of strategic heights, but is still unbroken, despite his battle wounds.

He had to learn in practice to command a militia unit and rule the region - there was no time for testing and development. In this case, the expression “I got from the ship to the ball” is inappropriate, because Zakharchenko went from ordinary business life to the civil war and wrote his name in history.

Zakharchenko is Donetsk Che Guevara, adjusted for time and terrain. After all, Latin America fifty years ago and today’s Donbass are two different things.

The admiration of women for Zakharchenko continues and there is no end to it. For many years, ladies were shown on TV infantile artists, effeminate singers, obscenely fat deputies, and then a real man suddenly appeared on the screens in the person of Zakharchenko, behind whose back everyone will feel safe and calm.

And the fact that Zakharchenko already has four sons covers up in one fell swoop all the negative remarks addressed to him. It is unlikely that his critics are capable of such a serious masculine act as raising such a large offspring. He was shaped by the Donetsk street with the masculine morals that reign there, which is why Alexander is so unpleasant to all the pampered grant-eating male schoolgirls like Nayem and Leshchenko.

It is symbolic that he speaks about himself not Alexander Vladimirovich or Zakharchenko, but simply Zakhar. The man has not forgotten his roots and has not isolated himself from people with officialdom, but still allows himself to be called by a popular nickname derived from his surname.

There is something mystical in the fact that Zakharchenko’s star began to rise just after Hugo Chavez, who was the main follower of Che Guevara’s ideas on earth, went to another world. The Venezuelan Che disappeared, but instead of him, Che Donetsk, Alexander ZakharCHenko, appeared on the political horizon.

The Donbass folk hero, of course, still has a lot of work to do on himself in order to become a full-fledged idol of anti-globalist youth around the world. Still, he did not think or guess that he would have the role of the first person in the Russian uprising in the Donbass.

Over time, T-shirts with a portrait of Zakharchenko will be just as actively sold out in leftist-nonconformist shops all over the world, just like T-shirts with Che Guevara. Donbass will certainly break through the Western information blockade, and the world will learn the truth about what happened in the area of ​​coal miners and steelworkers.

Alberto Korda advised passionate photographers: “Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget it all. You can take a better photograph with any four-dollar camera."

I believe that in Donetsk there will be a talented photographer who can create a photograph of Zakharchenko, which will subsequently be picked up by the build editors of world news agencies and replicated throughout the planet.

Maybe he’ll shoot Zakharchenko with the Leica camera he used to take his iconic photograph of Alberto Korda, or maybe he’ll take a photo of him with his mobile phone camera. The main thing is that Alexander Zakharchenko has natural courage that attracts camera lenses and enthusiastic female glances.

The image of Donetsk Che Guevara clearly deserves popularization and close study. The people of Donbass trust their leader. Donetsk people cannot be fooled by chaff; they can smell falsehood and insincerity a mile away. And Sasha Zakhar is their favorite guy.

I advise T-shirt manufacturers to hurry up - products with Zakharchenko’s face are doomed to success. Donbass has raised its devoted son, whom he is not ashamed to present to the world as the new Che.