Alexander Yurevich Borodai (born 1972) was the Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic from May to August 2014 (preceding Vladimir Antyufeyev) and a United Russia member of the State Duma of Russia from 12 October 2021.
Biography[]
Alexander Yurevich Borodai was born in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union in 1972, and he edited the right-wing and anti-Semitic newspaper Zavtra during the 1990s before serving in the Transnistrian army during the Transnistria War. Borodai befriended fellow Zavtra contributor and Transnistria veteran Igor Girkin, and he worked as a political and crisis management consultant while he and Girkin associated themselves with far-right businessman Konstantin Malofeev. In 2002, Borodai was appointed as a deputy director of the FSB. In this capacity, he facilitated Russia's takeover of Crimea and helped to establish the Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine during the "Russian Spring" of 2014. Borodai became the first prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, but he resigned months later, claiming that he had only sought to serve as a crisis manager and start-upper, and that a native Muscovite like himself shouldn't head the republic. In 2021, he was elected to the State Duma as a member of United Russia, and he survived a 7 November 2022 landmine attack in Kherson Oblast.