The murder of a separatist leader in Ukraine may pave the way for talks with the West

What happened
The Bell has clarified some details about the business interests of Alexander Zakharchenko, who was murdered last Friday. Zakharchenko was the leader of the largest rebel region of eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). A business conflict is one of the theories for why he was assassinated. Suspicions have also fallen on Moscow for organising the killing as the DNR is, in reality, controlled by Moscow. A power shift in Donetsk could play a role in stimulating new talks between Russia and the U.S. about Ukraine ahead of the expected next big round of U.S. sanctions.
- A former electrician and chicken factory representative, Zakharchenko was one of the first separatist leaders to use Kremlin support to claim power in Ukraine’s second largest city, Donetsk, in the spring of 2014. Several months later he was elected president of the DNR. By 2018, he was the only field commander in the DNR leadership — others had either been killed, assassinated or fled to Russia. New presidential elections had been scheduled for the fall of 2018, but they were postponed indefinitely five days before the attack on Zakharchenko. The decision to postpone the election, just like any other political decision in the DNR, was agreed with Moscow.
- One theory about Zakharchenko’s murder is that he was killed in a business conflict. Moscow didn’t allow the head of the DNR to make independent political decisions, but it did allow him to control local businesses. As sources in the DNR told The Bell, Zakharchenko, and his colleague who was injured in the attack, DNR Tax Minister Alexander Timofeev, received a percentage of the profits of all the region’s gas stations, major supermarket chains and local tobacco and alcohol producers. For example, Zakharchenko’s widow owns a chain of fitness centers and restaurants in Donetsk. Zakharchenko and Timofeev acquired these businesses with the help of security officers loyal to them. According to one of the participants of the 2014 events in Donetsk, the scheme was as follows: if Zakharchenko and Timofeev took a fancy to a restaurant, then soldiers would quickly appear and begin a search. Then, one of Timofeev’s men would arrive to sort out the matter of transferring control of a stake in the business.
- But the most significant business in the DNR is coal production and metals. In 2017, 47 coal and metals companies in the DNR — owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov — were nationalized. According to The Bell’s sources and Novaya Gazeta, these assets were passed to Zakharchenko, Timofeev and Sergei Kurchenko, a billionaire close to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The entire economic model depends on support from Moscow: coal and steel produced in Donetsk mines is needed by Ukrainian companies but they can only purchase the produce via Russia because of a trade boycott on the separatist territories. Novaya Gazeta’s sources say that DNR leaders wanted to increase their share of the profits from these businesses — and this made both Moscow, Kurchenko and those Russian siloviki running the businesses unhappy.
- No matter who was behind Zakharchenko’s murder, a new DNR leader may help Russia in peace negotiations. Formally, all current U.S. sanctions against Russia are in place because of Russia’s role in fuelling the conflict in Ukraine. Donald Trump said recently that finding a solution to the conflict was the main condition for sanctions to be lifted. At the end of September, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may raise this, at Trump’s request, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Immediately after Zakharchenko’s murder, Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the killing nullifies the Minsk agreement on Ukraine, which was signed by Zakharchenko. This sounds aggressive, but the word “nullify” may also imply a desire to reach a new peace deal.
Why the world should care
The murder of Alexander Zakharchenko after the liquidation of all other independent field commanders fits the logic of those who argues that “Moscow is cleaning up in a gangster-filled region to ease talks about the region’s future”. But it’s not worth jumping to conclusions: in the unrecognized republics of eastern Ukraine, politics, business and criminality are closely interwoven. The murder of the DNR leader could just have easily been driven by money and not politics.
Peter Mironenko
This newsletter is made with the support of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley.
