DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko is 40 years old. Wishes of Putin's assistant and memories of the militia

Today is the anniversary of DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko. He turned 40 years old. Zakharchenko received congratulations from Vladislav Surkov, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who expressed his “unshakable confidence that the peace and justice for which Donbass is fighting will triumph.” About the role of Zakharchenko - in the author's column of journalist Alexander Chalenko.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Telegram, Facebook, Classmates or In contact with

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 is already an accomplished person: the head of the DPR with a view to becoming the leader of Novorossiya in the future (his friend Zakhar Prilepin predicts that he will become the president of Ukraine).

This anniversary is a very good reason to answer the question: what do Donbass, and more broadly, Novorossia owe to Zakharchenko?

The first, and most important thing, is that Novorossiya exists.

On July 5, 2014, as a witness to those events, Ossetian militiaman Alan Mamiev, who was fighting in the Donbass at that time, recalls, after Strelkov surrendered Slavyansk and the entire northern Donetsk urban agglomeration without orders, three field commanders gathered in Donetsk for an emergency meeting: Zakharchenko, Khodakovsky and Dikiy, who were responsible for the defense of the city at that time.

They were in shock: they could not believe that a Russian officer could leave Slavyansk and go to Donetsk without an order. Therefore, in all this they saw a sign that Russia was “merging Novorossiya.” Once he left, it means he received an order from Moscow. What to do in this case? How to defend Donbass?

Sergei Kurginyan, who was present at the meeting at the time, was able to convince the commanders that Strelok had not received any order from Moscow, and leaving Slavyansk was his initiative. When Girkin issued an order for all militia units to leave Donetsk and go to Snezhnoye (a Donetsk town on the border with Russia), and then retreat to the territory of the Russian Federation altogether, Zakharchenko categorically refused to do this. This is his homeland, his family lives here. He won't leave here.

In April 2015, after an interview, he told me that he then called Strelok a traitor to his face. If there were no Zakharchenko and other local commanders, but only visiting comrades like Girkin, as Ukrainian propaganda has been claiming for 2 years, then Donbass would have been surrendered in the summer of 2014.

Novorossia, Donbass, Donetsk were lucky that local commanders also appeared. Otherwise, for two years now, as in Slavyansk, the yellow-blakyt flag would have been flying over Donetsk, and the Right Sector activists would have been organizing torchlight processions along Artema.

Second. Also thanks to Zakharchenko, Donetsk remained safe and sound. He and local field commanders prevented Strelok from turning it into Stalingrad by blowing up houses in the city for defense purposes. Donetsk is not a virtual landscape for a computer game. People live here. Russian people, not something virtual. Conclusion: the command of the Russian uprising, no matter what Russian historical territory it arises, should be commanded by a local and only a local, and not a “conquistador” who came from outside, no matter how good he may seem.

It’s just that such a character will leave the way he came. In his case, the concept of “Russian” is an abstraction, not tied to a locality, not something concrete - your family, friends, classmates and classmates, co-workers and work colleagues.

Well, third. Yes, Zakharchenko understood one hundred percent that this uprising is Russian and only Russian in nature. This is mainstream. Everything else is appendage. Therefore, he immediately began to correctly position himself as a leader: Zakharchenko is Russian. And the struggle is for the rights of Russians, the reunification of Russian lands. This was the meaning of the uprising in the spring of 2014.