He was a local boy from coal-dusted Donetsk who grew up to be a mine engineer. Aleksandr Zakharchenko quit that life to become a separatist warlord whose Russia-backed insurgents carved out a “republic” roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
On Aug. 31, a bomb ripped through a popular Donetsk cafe, killing Zakharchenko as he dined with several others. The cafe where he was dining was called Separ, or Separatist. He was survived by a wife and four sons.
