Russian ex-police chief Antyufeyev leads Donetsk rebels

A veteran of the pro-Russian separatist rebellion in Moldova, Vladimir Antyufeyev, now claims to be in command of rebel-held Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

On 28 July he announced that his immediate superior, "prime minister" Alexander Borodai, had left for Russia.

In early July Mr Antyufeyev - born in Russia - emerged as "deputy prime minister" of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic". He is known as a staunch defender of Russian state interests in former Soviet republics.

He moved to eastern Ukraine after 20 years as "minister of state security" in Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester region. His move suggests that Moscow is trying to exert more influence over the separatists.

State security career

Mr Antyufeyev was born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk in 1951 and graduated from the Soviet Interior Ministry's police academy in Minsk in 1974. At the time Minsk was the capital of Soviet Belorussia - now Belarus.

In the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, the then Maj Antyufeyev was one of the men in charge of criminal police investigations in Riga, Latvia. He led an elite police unit there, which attempted a crackdown on the Latvian independence movement.

When Latvia gained independence in 1991, the new authorities filed a criminal case against Maj Antyufeyev - and he fled the Baltic republic.

Several months later he resurfaced in breakaway Trans-Dniester, where he fought in the 1992 separatist revolt against Moldovan troops, rallying Cossacks, volunteers and other pro-Russian paramilitaries.

Now a major-general, he became the founder and, for two decades, sole head of the breakaway region's powerful security ministry.

Bakudaily.az