Biography

Born in Moscow in the family of Eurasian philosopher Yuri Boroday (1934-2006). His sister is a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy, Tatiana Borodai.

He took part in the events of September-October 1993 in Moscow on the side of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, which opposed President Boris Yeltsin, as part of one of the combat groups, where, according to him, he was "not the most important, but not the most ordinary".

In 1994, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Lomonosov Moscow State University and later completed his postgraduate studies, where he specialised in social philosophy, dealing with ethnic conflicts and elite theory.

From December 1993 to June 1994, he worked as an expert at the Russian Reform Foundation. From June 1994, working as a military correspondent for RIA Novosti, he covered the first Chechen war and made television reports for NTV and ORT. In 1997, he became a military columnist for the Zavtra newspaper, contributing conceptual articles to publications that professed Eurasianism.

From March to November 1998, he was an advisor on media investments to Gennady Gafarov, chairman of the Russian Business Roundtable, and since June 1998 he has worked mainly as an independent PR consultant. He has participated in more than ten election campaigns of various levels.

In August 1999, special correspondents of the Zavtra newspaper Oleksandr  Boroday and Igor Strelkov, together with special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, travelled to the Kadar zone in Dagestan to visit several villages inhabited by Wahhabis. Boroday has been a regular contributor to this publication since 1996. The topics of his materials include interethnic relations in the countries of the former USSR, the army, the situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.

In 2001-2002, he was deputy editor-in-chief of the Russian Entrepreneur magazine.

Since April 2001, he has been a co-founder and CEO of Sociomaster, a company specialising in crisis consulting.

In 2021, he ran in the Duma elections for Putin's United Russia party.

Russian-Ukrainian war

In May 2014, he became the first "prime minister" of the DPR terrorist group.

From 8 August 2014 to 20 October 2014, he was an adviser and deputy to the so-called "DPR Council of Ministers" and Oleksandr  Zakharchenko.

In 2019, he assessed Russia's role as follows:

"We are all indebted to Russian President Putin. We are volunteers who came in 2014. We owe him such a small thing as our lives. Everyone who came in the first half of 2014 remembers the situation in the second half of July 2014. If it were not for his policies, decisions and actions, we would not exist. Just as there would be no Russian Donbas: Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.
- Oleksandr Borodai, 2019

Since 2014, he has been wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

Connection with the FSB

On 25 July 2002, the Russian news agency APN reported that Oleksandr  Borodai, an FSB major general, had been appointed deputy director of the FSB for information policy and special projects. He will be responsible for "organising the most sensitive FSB operations in the political field". The source of information about the appointment was an unnamed source in the Russian presidential administration. The newspaper reported that 35-year-old Oleksandr  Boroday is a certified philosopher, a graduate of the Moscow State University's Faculty of Philosophy, who previously worked for Oleksandr  Prokhanov's Zavtra newspaper.

On 30 July 2002 the Russian newspaper The Moscow Times published a "refutation" by Borodai of his appointment to the FSB. The report stated that in a telephone conversation Boroday had said that his appointment to the FSB was a complete lie and explained it as a joke arranged to mark his 30th birthday, and called the APN publication sensationalist.