A who’s who of pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine

Pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine are pressing ahead with plans to hold referendums on Sunday in a move likely to escalate the crisis, despite calls from the Kremlin to postpone them.

Following is a list of the main players in the rebel camp:

– Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, 49 –

Vyacheslav Ponomaryov says he was running a soap factory when pro-Moscow separatists tapped him to lead them in the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which has since become the epicentre of rebel activity.

His broad smile revealing several gold teeth, he cuts an imposing, quasi-military figure befitting his past in the Soviet military. Two fingers are missing from his left hand.

Not afraid of salty phrases, he once said he would never shake hands with a “faggot” like Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, saying he would “shoot him himself” if he ventured into Slavyansk.

Ponomaryov attained worldwide notoriety during the detention of seven OSCE monitors in “his” town hall, forcing his “prisoners of war” to give a news conference in front of the world’s media before eventually releasing them under Kremlin pressure.

– Pavlo Gubarev, 31 –

Self-proclaimed governor of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, Gubarev was arrested in March but exchanged for three Ukrainian special forces officers on Wednesday in a move hailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

An amateur boxer, Gubarev was previously a militant member of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, whose programme rejects all things Western — globalisation, the United States or the International Monetary Fund — and campaigns to join Russia.

Gubarev, a local advertising executive, first grabbed attention on March 3 when he took over the regional government building in Donetsk with pro-Russian forces and proclaimed himself the “people’s governor”.

– Denis Pushilin, 33 –

Co-president of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, Pushilin is a follower of paramilitary group Oplot, whose leader Yevgeny Zhilin told AFP in an interview in February that pro-Western protesters should have their arms broken or eyes gouged out.

After military service he began studying economics in Donetsk but dropped out.

He says he is a member of the political grouping MMM, which was born of the MMM ponzi scheme run by famous Russian fraudster Sergei Mavrodi.

Since 2002, the married father-of-one has been involved in the retail group “Solodke Zhittia” (Dolce Vita) that is close to pro-Russian deputy Boris Kolesnikov.

However, in his biography released in November, he said he was unemployed.

– Igor Strelkov, 43 –

One of the top rebel commanders in Slavyansk, Igor Strelkov is known to the Ukrainian secret service as Russian GRU colonel Igor Girkin who lives in Moscow.

He was linked to the capture and detention of the seven OSCE monitors.

Kiev has published what it says are intercepted conversations between him and Putin’s special envoy Vladimir Lukin talking about the OSCE officers.

According to Ukrainian secret services, he travelled to Simferopol in Crimea in February, just before it was annexed by Moscow.

In an interview given to a Russian tabloid, he said he “didn’t want to stop at Donetsk”.

“We want to liberate Ukraine from the fascists,” he said, describing the former Soviet Republic as a failed state and judging that the international community wouldn’t “start World War III over it”.

– Valery Bolotov, 43 –

A former parachutist who took part in wars in Armenia and the Azerbaijan separatist region of Nagorny Karabakh, the former economist and engineer is the “people’s governor” of Lugansk and a commander of the “south-east army”.

According to a video published by Ukrainian media, the father-of-two was the man who decreed a curfew and the “total mobilisation of all men” in Lugansk.

“We are going to defend our territory against the neo-Nazi occupiers. Our goal is Kiev.”