Rebel 'foreign minister' of Donetsk looks to Texas for union of separatists

Aleksandr Kofman dreams of alliance with Texas. It may seem a curious ambition for the foreign minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), the self-proclaimed pro-Russian “state” at the heart of the war in eastern Ukraine.

A fervent admirer of Vladimir Putin, Mr Kofman keeps books like “The CIA against the USSR” on his shelf and sees the United States as a ravenous monster, bent on global tyranny and dominance.

But America’s lone-star state has something attractive for Mr Kofman: a fledgling secession movement.

As rumbling blasts of artillery sound from the suburbs, officials in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine are plotting their entrance onto the world stage. Mr Kofman, a former businessman whose ministry has 38 staff, is keen to emphasise his foreign policy is fully independent.

“Texas, Scotland, Flanders, Venice, Bohemia - no, hang on, not Bohemia - the Basques, Catalonia,” he reeled off the names as he sucked on an electronic cigarette during an interview at his ministry in a business centre in Donetsk. “We’ve already had direct contact with 18 territories - don’t ask me to name them all, my memory could fail me.” The minister’s plan, he said, is to unite a flock of unrecognised republics and breakaway lands into a mighty coalition that “could, let’s say, represent 10 per cent of the area of the globe, or 15 per cent of its population, or 7 per cent of GDP”.

“It’s my initiative,” explained Mr Kofman, 37, who was appointed in November. “We are inviting any territory that at the moment wants independence but does not yet have the status of a sovereign state to join our union; for example, Texas. There are activists there who are fighting for that and they fully support Novorossiya.”

The Texas Nationalist Movement confirmed a meeting with a DNR representative in Moscow in December and said “Novorossiya” - another term for rebel-controlled parts of Ukraine - had a “fundamental right” to self determination.

Other allies being targeted by the DNR are the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - the Ukrainian separatists have requested entry despite being 6,000 miles away from the nearest member state - and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Mr Kofman is hoping to gather all of these potential partners at a conference next month. He will also meet Iran’s ambassador to Moscow and wants to cultivate ties with Syria.

Many people will call such plans a fantasy; others, a muddle.

The foreign minister himself is a little confused about his brothers in arms, mixing up Serbia and Republic Srpska in Bosnia. He said that together his union would “represent a great economic power” but at the same time admitted that without full country status the members could have “no economic ties, only cultural ones”.

The elephant in the room is Russia. Lofty talk of self determination hides the fact that the DNR would waste away without Moscow’s international muscle or military backing.

A peace deal reached between Ukraine’s government and the separatists in September has disintegrated. Last week, the separatists went on the offensive near Donetsk, moving to cut off thousands of Ukrainian troops near the town of Debaltseve, a transport hub.

Russian support for the rebels takes the form of tanks, troops and artillery, all of which have allegedly been sent into Ukraine in large numbers, but it still has limits. The Kremlin performed a semantic card-shuffle in November when it said it “respected” elections held by the insurgents but did not recognise them, making clear that Russia would not annex the DNR, as it did last April with Crimea.

Andrei Purgin, the chairman of the DNR’s “people’s soviet” and a veteran of the separatist movement, claims he is not disappointed the Kremlin is unwilling to absorb the republic.

“We are one cabin in the great Russian ship,” he said in an interview at his office on Pushkin Boulevard, which is adorned with a portrait of Mr Putin and three posters of the gaping mouths of sharks.

Mr Purgin believes the republic’s foreign policy should be founded on strong ties to Moscow. “One day we could join a confederation with Russia,” he said. As for a union with secessionists in Texas or Catalonia, “this is more like a spiritual closeness with other people who are ready to rise up and change the world”.

Not far away, on the ninth floor of Donetsk’s central administration building, Boris Litvinov, a Communist politician who drew up the republic’s declaration of independence last spring, reflected on its international status.

“You don’t build Rome in a day,” he said. “We are unrecognised; Russia has not recognised us. But we don’t lose hope that some other countries will do so when we lay out our borders - those that are fighting against American dependence: Venezuela, Cuba.” The DNR, Mr Litvinov believes, has greater might and potential than other pro-Moscow “frozen conflict” regions in the former Soviet Union like Transdniestria in Moldova and Abkhazia in Georgia.

“I met some Transdniestrians in Moscow recently and they said, If only we had your border with Russia,” he said. “And when the Abkhazians came here, they said, If only we had your mines and factories, back home we have just wine and tangerines.” On Mr Litvinov’s wall hangs an airbrushed portrait of Joseph Stalin, next to one of Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the DNR.

“Stalin was an efficient manager who rebuilt the country after times of war and crisis,” said Mr Litvinov. “He watches over our leader to make sure he does the same.”

Whether the DNR can survive, let alone thrive, remains unclear. It has coal mines, metallurgy plants and machine-building factories, but many are ageing and inefficient. Export markets are cut off by the conflict and Russia may not want or need its goods. Banks do not operate. Whole streets in some towns are in ruins and Donetsk’s international airport is a wreck. Ukraine’s central government in Kiev has stopped paying wages, pensions or social benefits to people in the DNR.

Critically, Ukraine’s government has also stopped buying medicines for hospitals in the DNR, saying it will not deliver to rebel-held territories.

At Donetsk’s Psychiatric Hospital Number One on the western edge of the city, only sporadic supplies of psychotropic drugs are arriving with aid convoys from in Moscow. Patients with nervous disorders, schizophrenia and epilepsy have gone for up to a fortnight without pills, meaning some have fits once a day rather than the usual once a week.

There was a power cut when the Telegraph visited, a frequent occurrence that switches off the heating. On Ward No. 5, patients huddled around a stove installed by rebel fighters. “The patients sawed up the firewood from trees knocked down by the shelling,” said Vladimir Moskovoy, a doctor, doing his rounds by torchlight. “Soon it will run out and we don’t have money to buy more.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the chief doctor, said the password for the hospital’s bank account no longer works. “We have enough drugs for four more days, that’s it,” he added. “Once I would have thought this was catastrophic. Now I’m just glad the patients are alive and fed.”

To the east of Donetsk, the hospital in the town of Shakhtarsk is handing out its last packets of insulin and painkillers. Only eight blood containers are left, meaning donors could give blood but there is nowhere sterile to store it.

Some of the last blood was used to save a nine year old boy who lost both legs and an arm in a shelling. “Imagine the horror of the moment when this boy was wheeled in to me with his face a red pulp and his mother carrying his feet and his hand in a plastic bag,” said Vladimir Ilchuk, the hospital’s chief surgeon.

Amid such depravity, some might think it delusional to plan fanciful unions with far-off lands. But Mr Kofman is unperturbed. He is planning a trip to meet officials in Venezuela – if the foreign ministry budget of £23,000 per month will stretch to cover tickets for him, his interpreter and one other diplomat.

So far, South Ossetia, the Caucasus region which Russia effectively wrenched from Georgia in 2008, is the only territory to have recognised the Donetsk People’s Republic. Its flag stands proudly with the DNR one outside Mr Kofman's door. In his cabinet, there is a shelf of gifts from South Ossetia. Souvenirs from Abkhazia – yet to officially acknowledge the DNR but perhaps teetering on the brink– are carefully placed one shelf lower.

“We will help Texas to achieve their independence too, if they genuinely want it,” said Mr Kofman. “Only without war and bloodshed.”