[5][6][7][8] Zakharchenko was appointed prime minister in August 2014 after his predecessor Alexander Borodai resigned, and went on to win the early November 2014 election for the position.

[14] In 2010, Zakharchenko became head of the Donetsk branch of OPLOT, a pro-Russian militant organization established in Kharkiv by Yevgeny Zhilin.

[b][better source needed] On 16 April 2014, 20 members of Oplot (including Zakharchenko), armed with clubs, rifles and some automatic weapons, occupied the offices of Donetsk city council, demanding a referendum on the status of the region.

[20] According to Borodai, Donbas native Zakharchenko succeeded him for a Russian government effort "to try to show the West that the uprising was a grassroots phenomenon".

[21] In September 2014, Zakharchenko was the lead negotiator for the DPR at the Minsk Protocol, which agreed to a peace plan for the war in Donbas.

[24] In February 2015, Zakharchenko, representing the DPR, agreed to the Minsk II peace treaty, calling it a "major victory for the Lugansk and Donetsk People's Republics".

"[28] During the 2014 Donbas parliamentary elections campaign, Zakharchenko told potential voters that he wanted pensions to be "higher than in Poland.

[32] In an interview with Zakhar Prilepin on Tsargrad TV in late 2016, he said that Britain must be conquered, which would usher in a "Golden Age for Russia".

[43] Zakharchenko was killed by a bomb explosion in the café "Separ" ("Сепар", a slang term for "separatist" both in Ukrainian and Russian) on Pushkin Boulevard in Donetsk, on 31 August 2018.

Officials in Kyiv rejected the accusations, stating that Zakharchenko's death was the result of civil strife in the DNR.

Initial reports say that Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Trapeznikov was appointed acting head of the Donetsk People's Republic.

[48] Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to Zakharchenko's family, calling his death a "contemptible murder".

[49][50] The Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesperson Maria Zakharova blamed Ukraine for the death, claiming that it is "driving its country to the verge of an all-out disaster at increasingly faster speeds".