Today is a sad anniversary. On this day, 6 year ago, the first Head of Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Zakharchenko died as a result of assassination attempt by the Ukrainian special services.

Video description:

Here is a video from 9 years ago, Alexander Zakharchenko invited Poroshenko to Donetsk to pick up the flag left behind at the airport by the Ukrainian Nazi battalions:

- “We removed this flag from Donetsk airport. If they come to us with the same thing, the fate of those boys is sad: almost all of them will die.”

Cynthia... I wanted to add that Russian soldiers died and were wounded trying to keep the Airport 9 years ago. American Russell 'Texas' Bentley (now deceased, murdered this year, in April) was at the airport back in 2015.

Here's parts of Russell's description of that time:

On New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2014, Russell got up at 4AM, loaded up his gear, and traveled to a monastery adjacent to the Donetsk airport, which was under Ukrainian control at the time.

“When I got there, it was just at dawn, it was dark still. It was very, very cold in those days, like twenty-five below. And as soon as I got out of the van, the first thing I saw was a blown-up church.”

understood that that was the symbol of this war, you know,” Russell recalls. “Between good and evil, and I also realized that the position that I was going to be manning was basically right in the middle of a giant cemetery, so it was the struggle between life and death.”

Russell’s intuition proved accurate in the days that followed.

They unloaded food and water and ammunition, and on New Year’s Day, they were already fighting. There were Ukrainian snipers in the airport’s control tower and they rained bullets down on the cemetery and the monastery where Russell and his comrades were holed up.

“The only heat was from wood-burning stoves and the only light was from candles or flashlights, and all the windows were filled up with sandbags, so there was no light even during the day.”

It was dark and cold, and the place was filled with smoke from the stoves on the east side of the building. The west side of the building faced the airport and was open to enemy artillery and sniper bullets.

Full article with more from Russell, where the above text was found:

https://medium.com/@deborahlarmstrong/the-donbas-cowboy-533dcc9fb2b