Muscovite Prime Minister of Donetsk

LAST weekend interviews with the Prime Minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic Alexander Borodai, who formerly worked as a consultant for an investment fund in Moscow, took place.  Mr. Borodai is a Russian, but claims he has come to eastern Ukraine out of patriotism and an intent to help Russian speakers, and to protect their rights.

He says:  'I'm an ordinary citizen of Russia, not a government worker.'

In last Monday's battle between the Ukrainian army and the separatives, it seems that most of the deaths were Russian citizens.  Only last Thursday, 33 coffins were shipped back to Russia through the porous border.

Mr. Borodai is well known in Russia as a member of a group of ultra nationalists who were part of the far-right Zavra newspaper in the 1990s and whose pan-Slavic ideas, once considered marginal, have now 'become part of the mainstream' in Russia under Putin, according to Oleg Kashin, a Russian investigative journalist in the International New York Times. 

Another journalist, Irena Chalupa has descibed Borodai as 'the Karl Rove of Russian imperialism.'