Zachari Simeonov Zachariev (1904–1987) was a Bulgarian military pilot and commander, who served in the Red Army from 1929 to 1944 and reached the rank of colonel general.

[2] In 1931 poruchik Zachariev was discharged from the army because of his antifascist views (he organized a strike on May 1[1]), and he and with his friends - pilots Kiril Kirilov, Boris Ganev and Nikola Vatov - emigrated to the USSR.

In 1936 three Bulgarian instructors of the Tambov flight school wrote reports with a request to enter a volunteer aviation unit, which was to be deployed to Spain.

In Spain Zachariev fought under the Turkish pseudonym Halil Ekrem,[1] flying a Potez-542 bomber, later a SB,[3] carrying airstrikes against Francoist targets.

[citation needed] In September 1944 the government of the Fatherland Front took power in Bulgaria, and Zachariev returned to his home country and under his real name to rebuild the Bulgarian Air Force.