Since 2015 a number of DPR and LPR field commanders and other significant figures were killed or otherwise removed from power. This included Cossack commander Pavel Dryomov, commander of Private Military Company (''ЧВК'') Dmitry Utkin ("Wagner"), Alexander Bednov ("Batman"), Aleksey Mozgovoy, Yevgeny Ishchenko, Andrei Purgin and Dmitry Lyamin (the last two arrested). In August 2016 Igor Plotnitsky, head of LPR, was seriously injured in a car bombing attack in Luhansk. In September 2016 Evgeny Zhilin (Yevhen Zhylin), leader of a separatist "Oplot" unit, was killed in a restaurant near Moscow. In October 2016 a military commander Arseniy Pavlov ("Motorola") was killed by an IED planted at his house. In February 2017 a bomb planted in an office killed Mikhail Tolstykh ("Givi"). On 31 August 2018 DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko was killed by a bomb in a restaurant in Donetsk. The DNR and Russia blamed the Security Service of Ukraine; Ukraine rejected these accusations, stating that Zakharchenko's death was the result of civil strife in the DNR.