Biography

Born on 3 September 1978 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. His father is a journalist Igor Kots, who was the editor-in-chief and general director of the Soviet Sport newspaper in 2003-2013. A month after his birth, Alexander's family moved to the mainland to Khabarovsk. He entered school and then continued his studies in Vladivostok.

In 1993, he moved to Moscow, where he graduated from high school and entered an institute. However, he had to interrupt his studies. In 1996-98, he did his military service in the 38th Separate Signal Regiment of the Russian Airborne Forces, in the Moscow region, in the military unit 64164. After the army, he continued his studies.

Since 1999, he has been working for Komsomolskaya Pravda, becoming a special correspondent for the politics department. He is responsible for covering military conflicts, natural disasters and other cataclysms in Russia and other countries, interviewing prominent political figures, and hosting programmes on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

As a military correspondent, he covered events and military operations in Kosovo (2000, 2008 and 2011), Afghanistan (2006, 2013), the North Caucasus republics (more than 30 assignments from 2000 to 2016), Egypt (2, 2013), Libya (several assignments in 2011), Syria (several assignments in 2012-2013 and 2015-2017), Iraq (2016), as well as during Russia's aggression in Ukraine (both during the fighting in 2014-2015 and since 22nd of March), and since 2022).

On 9 May 2004, when the President of the Chechen Republic Akhmat Kadyrov was killed in a terrorist attack at a stadium in Grozny, Oleksandr Kots was injured.

On 3 September 2004, during a business trip to Beslan, he participated in the evacuation of child hostages from a school seized by terrorists together with Russian special services. He was nominated for a state award "for his participation in the rescue of children from the Beslan school and for his assistance in the investigation of the tragedy", but declined it.

Together with his colleague Dmitriy Steshin, he prepared material for the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, living for several days in the abandoned city of Pripyat.

In June 2006, together with other journalists, he covered anti-NATO protests and US-Ukrainian exercises in Feodosia (Crimea). At the same time, he took part in the illegal installation of a Russian flag on the roof of the building of the military sanatorium of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in Yevpatoriya.

On 9 August 2008, Oleksandr Kots was sent to Tskhinvali to cover the events of the Russian-Georgian war. He was in the APC of Commander Khrulov in the first column of the battalion tactical group of the motorised infantry battalion of the 58th Army sent to Tskhinvali.

During the battle, he filmed the events with a video camera and prepared a report for his room. He was seriously wounded in the right arm and three shrapnel fragments in the leg, but the next day he transmitted his report from the field hospital of the Ministry of Emergency Situations near Vladikavkaz. The actions of Major D. Vetchinov (Hero of the Russian Federation posthumously) saved Alexander and other journalists from death. For an hour and a half, bleeding to death, Oleksandr waited for evacuation, which was eventually organised by his colleague from the MC, Major of the Airborne Forces (retired) Viktor Sokirko, who crawled out of the shelter to the road and managed to stop the departing BMP. He also provided first aid to his colleague and then accompanied him to Jawa[4]. For his secondment to South Ossetia, Alexander Kots was awarded the Medal for Courage (16 January 2009) and considers this incident to be the most dangerous in his reporting career.

In 2010, he reported from the cathedral of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, which was destroyed by an earthquake.

During the Arab Spring, in April 2011, while covering the civil war in Libya, he, along with his colleague Dmitry Steshin and three journalists from the Russian TV channel NTV, were captured by rebels. The reporters were accused of working for the Muammar Gaddafi regime as intelligence officers. However, thanks to the intervention of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Special Representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin, all the reporters were released with the help of the Italian military, who were stationed at Benghazi airfield.

From December 2013 to the present, Alexander Kots has been in Ukraine (since 2014 - illegally, without accreditation from Ukraine, in the occupied territories of Donbas). He is one of the key figures in the Russian information campaign in Donbas. Together with Dmytro Steshyn, Kots spent a month and a half in Sloviansk before it was liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in July 2014.

According to some reports, he was awarded the medal of the Order of Merit for the Motherland, second class, for "objective coverage of events in Crimea" (21 April 2014). At the same time, the SBU banned him from entering the territory of Ukraine for five years and put him on the wanted list as a terrorist aide. Despite the ban, he continued to work on the territory of the so-called 'DPR'.

Since October 2015, periodically travelling to Syria on business trips, he has been covering the Russian operation.

In January-February 2019, he was on a business trip to Venezuela, where he reported in support of the dictatorial regime of Nicolas Maduro.

Since September 2020, he has been on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, covering the events of the second Karabakh war.

Since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, he has been working in the military conflict zone. On 3 April 2022 (the first day it became known about the massacre in Bucha), he called it a "fake". The next day, he accused "Nazi Boatswain" of killing civilians.

On 30 October 2023, Kotz was outraged by the fact that Dagestanis were attacking Jews in Russia. He shamed them, saying that their fellow countrymen who took part in the war against Ukraine and returned home in black bags did not suffer such a shame.