THE DEATH OF WARLORD
The victims of the bombing were Arsen Pavlov, a pro-Russian warlord better known as Motorola, and his bodyguard, blown up by an improvised explosive while entering the lift in separatist-held east Ukraine.
Pavlov, 33, was a separatist commander, a Russian citizen and Chechen war veteran who boasted of executing Ukrainian prisoners. He filmed battles on a helmet camera and then passed the footage on to Russian television. Even during his 2014 wedding he wore combat fatigues while his bride sported a handgun in a shoulder holster over her dress.
The killings late on Sunday threaten to reignite full-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine, even as the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France agreed on Wednesday on a road map to implement the stalled peace plan in the war-torn region.
But, as the most prominent of at least seven rebel warlords assassinated in little more than a year, Pavlov’s death has also prompted a broader question: why are so many separatist leaders dying in mysterious circumstances during what is ostensibly a ceasefire?
Theories range from pro-Ukrainian groups taking revenge, to squabbles among rebel factions, to Russian security forces disposing of separatists they can no longer control.
“I think this is all connected,” Eduard Basurin, deputy defence minister of the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, told the Financial Times, describing the dead men as “leaders that the masses followed”.
“They were all killed by … terrorist acts,” he added. “It’s not worthwhile to blame one country. It could be special services from various countries, those that have an interest in this conflict.”
Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Donetsk-based separatists who himself survived an attempted hit this year, was quick to accuse Ukraine’s security services of murdering “my friend” Pavlov.
“We can assume that [Ukrainian president] Petro Poroshenko violated the ceasefire and declared war on us,”
