This evening there were reports that he had regained consciousness.

As we reported earlier, Pavel Gubarev, former “people’s governor” of the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic” reportedly suffered an assassination attempt and was hospitalized last night in Rostov Region.

Translation: Pavel Gubarev, leader of the “Novorossiya” movement has regained consciousness after the attempted assassination.

Yet Gubarev’s wife Yekaterina has not confirmed this on his Facebook page, where she has already posted a message on his condition 12 hours ago, saying he was still unconscious.

And now dozens of “newbie egg” low-follower Twitter accounts have appeared saying Gubarev is not conscious — a typical disinformation phenomenon on stories related to both Russia and Russian-backed separatists.

Another odd fact about this story is that now Gubarev’s car is missing, according to carfactum.ru.

That means it is difficult to prove there were gunshots made at the vehicle, or how it crashed.

In yesterday’s message on Facebook, Gubareva said the accident occurred between 11 and 12 pm and said her husband ran into a cement pillar. She said her husband was unconscious and doctors said he had suffered a traumatic brain injury with a hematoma but it was mild and he was expected to recover. He had no gunshot wounds or other serious injuries. She denied rumors on social media (which have tended to claim that Gubarev was intoxicated and tried to convert the incident into an assassination attempt) (translation by The Interpreter):

They try to lend any incident a political coloration. On the eve of the first democratic elections in the republic, this is to the advantage first of all to former Donetsk oligarchs and the Ukrainian government. They could not beat us by force, now they try to split us with internal quarrels. Everyone who disseminates panic on social media and supports groundless accusations is now pouring water on the mills of the Kiev fascists.

Gubareva added that members of the “Novorossiya” movement would participation in the elections to parliament in the “Free Donbass” bloc, which was registered by the DPR.

Yesterday, Gubarev’s followers picked the the DPR Central Elections Commission complaining that their leader was denied participation in the elections.

The details of Gubarev’s accident have not been confirmed outside the DPR press and some sympathetic Russian media.

Citing a broadcast from the radio station Govorit Moskva, Obozrevatel’ reported that the Rostov Health Ministry denied that Gubarev was being treated in any regional hospitals.

The Interior Ministry of Rostov Region also said they had no information about the hospitalization.

Obozrevatel’ ran a photo of Gubarev standing, with his arm in a cast, but it was taken earlier this year in March when he also had a broken arm.

Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) reported that Gubarev had suffered a broken arm and numerous bruises.

At first the DPR’s Central Elections commission announced that Gubarev’s party “Novorossiya” could not take part in the elections because representatives of the CECE had not been at the party’s founding congress.

But Gubarev’s last post was that this statement was “fake” and that he intended to submit his documents to run for head of the DPR. Meanwhile, Roman Lyagin, head of the CECE, said that the deadline for submission had passed.

A friend of Gubarev’s, Yevgeny Orlov told KP they left Rostov, headed for Donetsk about 9 or 10 pm, and he was driving. Another car overtook them and shoot at them, causing Pavel to run into a telegraph pole. His details thus differed from the story told by Gubareva’s wife.

Another eyewitness told KP that he saw a dark-colored jeep cut off Gubarev’s car and open fire.

The blogger Colonel Cassad said that the purpose of the assassination attempt was to intimidate, not kill Gubarev; he compared this incident to the methodical murder of Gubarev’s advisor, Yevgeny Prosyolkov, killed in Lugansk while bringing humanitarian aid to the rebels. Colonel Cassad (who is Boris Rozhin, editor of Golos Sevastopolya) also reported that Gubarev had awakened this evening and was out of danger.

Making reference to the leaders of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Lugansk People’s Republic,” respectively, Colonel Cassad said the elections were a means to “legitimize [Aleksandr] Zakharchenko and [Igor] Plotnitsky, and the Moscow political technologists who work with them came to Novorossiya hardly so that Gubarev, with all his shortcomings, would become head of the DPR.”

He said that while many were knocking Gubarev know “for pay or out of stupidity,” they owed it to him for the fact that “the virtual Novorossiya began to take on an unexpected form with its content” and that he was the right person who “lit the flame of rebellion” at the right time.