IN LUHANSK, a shabby mining city near Ukraine’s eastern border, the fighting sounds like the rumble of distant thunder. Smoke rises to the north, where apartment blocks fade into tightly packed cottages and allotments. Outside the dilapidated hospital, “Chechens” (shorthand for Russian and Caucasian mercenaries who are the backbone of the insurgency) lounge in a truck. Muscled and swaggering, with kerchiefs knotted round their heads, they are a far tougher proposition than the locals who make up the rank and file. Several hundred are said to be barracked in student hostels.

For the government in Kiev, the only solution may in the end be military. Fuelled by Russian weapons and propaganda, the insurgency has no clear leadership. Over 30 groups control different towns and buildings in the cities, where fragile truces between militias and mayors preserve a semblance of normality. In Donetsk, firmly under insurgent control, a “People’s Republic” issues journalists with accreditation cards. The minister for humanitarian aid, his manbag and loafers in striking contrast with colleagues’ pseudo-military dress, shows off medicine and food for distribution to refugees. That the locks have been torn off the office doors, he admits, has led to pilfering. An unpleasant smell hints at the absence of a minister for cleaning.

A couple of streets away, municipal services are still run from the mayor’s office, nominally part of the Kiev government. Pensions and salaries are being paid; public transport is running; utilities continue to work. A new cycle path has just opened along Artyoma Street. Taking action against the insurgency by, for example, turning off the electricity to the television tower (which broadcasts only Russian channels), is impossible. As the mayor’s press secretary admits, “if we actively took Kiev’s side we wouldn’t exist any more.”

Normality may yet disappear altogether. In Donetsk and Luhansk few bank machines still dispense cash and drivers risk having their cars commandeered by men with guns. The streets empty as soon as darkness falls. On June 17th the People’s Republic posted armed men inside the Donetsk branch of the national bank; whether it has access to national-government bank accounts is unclear. Some cities may go the way of Slovyansk, where the local hospital depends on its own generator for electricity, there are long queues for water, and mortar fire from nearby Ukrainian positions causes a steady stream of civilian deaths and injuries. Some 60,000 people, half the town’s population, have left.

Ordinary people hold their breath and wait. Two kind ladies, bustling about their empty café to pack a picnic of blinis and cucumber, say they just want peace. “Why are they shooting at us, what have we done wrong?” In his little flat, an archaeologist from Luhansk University, sorting through his collection of delicate flint blades, says that a few months ago he could organise small pro-Ukrainian rallies of a few hundred. Now most of his friends and colleagues have gone. There will be no digs for him this summer. The site where the flints came from has fallen under rebel control. His other site, in the Crimean hills, is now part of Russia.