SLAVYANSK, UKRAINE—We were just a few nervous steps from the taxi when the small mob descended.

Four angry faces, bulged tight with tension on the ready-to-blow streets of Slavyansk, getting right up in ours. Three men and a woman. Fifty-something. Friends of Russia. Civilians .

Show us ID. Now.

The Star’s interpreter, Mikhail, gave me a fleeting look I had yet to see in our week together. An end-of-the-world look.

They studied his Ukrainian passport, then spun my way. I’d left mine back in our room, deliberately, because Canada, as we’ve reported, is an especially dirty word here in occupied, Russified east Ukraine.

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But there was no hiding the other dirty word: journalist. And so, with great reluctance, I played the Toronto Star card.

A frenzy ensued. And amid the shouts, and Mikhail’s counter-shouts, I saw the most aggressive of the men raise his cellphone to make The Call. He was a civilian, but it seemed now that he knew someone who was not. We were about to get sucked down the black hole of detention that is taking reporters and others out of the regional equation at a torrid rate.

One last card to play. “Parlez-vous Francais?” I asked in the calmest voice I could muster. “Je suis un journalist Canadien. Franco-Canadien .” Franco Franco Franco. I couldn’t say it enough. Anything but English.

It was a ruse that probably shouldn’t have worked. But it slowed things down. The woman pulled down the arm of the man with the cellphone, buying us time.

For the next 30 minutes we withstood a withering browbeat. It was The World According to Putin — a fierce, beseeching laundry list of grievances, frustrations and fear, delivered in staccato Russian.

But the more they vented, the less angry they became. And about halfway through, I began to think — hope — vive le Quebec libre . My dismal command of Canada’s other official language was enough to persuade these desperate and panicked monolingual Russians in Ukraine that we weren’t really the enemy. French, ironically, was our Get Out Of Jail card in a part of Ukraine whose language lacks official status with the new government in Kyiv.

This complex mess involves much more than language. But as we worked to extract ourselves — there were least 20 handshakes in the final 15 minutes of the encounter, and one of the men actually said “sorry” at the very end — the risk of speaking English in these parts was never more apparent.

The airwaves have been stripped of Ukrainian television and there are Moscow’s state-controlled feeds in their place. And for the past week, leaflets have been circulating throughout the insurgent-controlled towns warning of American provocateurs. “Beware the CIA in sheep’s clothing,” one reads.

Thursday afternoon’s close call came on a day that got more jagged by the hour in Slavyansk, the tactical epicentre of Ukraine’s separatist uprising. The morning saw Ukrainian special forces advance in two columns to within three kilometres of the city centre, unloading fire on pro-Russian checkpoints that left at least three dead.

As insurgents retreated under clouds of flaming tire smoke and as news of the deaths spread, the Ukrainian army then retreated, leaving a numbed city to at least superficially go about its business.

Reaction to the violence was swift, with Moscow signalling an intensification of military exercises on along the Ukrainian border and Russian President Vladimir Putin issuing a warning of “consequences.”

“If these people (in Kyiv) have opted for a hot stage, which is in fact a counter-insurgency operation, it will definitely have certain consequences for those who make such decisions,” Putin told a media forum in St. Petersburg.

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“Given what they have done today, authorities in Kyiv have become a junta, a kind of cabal, so to say.”

Inside the city, the thin veneer of business-as-normal was transparent. The Star spoke to a group of three young men, longtime friends we were told, near the Slavyansk train station who seemed cautiously at odds with each other.

They all shared anger and frustration at the morning’s deaths — and a fear that their city was beginning to buckle. One said it was a big mistake for the Ukrainian army to confront pro-Russian checkpoints as they are overwhelmingly manned by local volunteers — unlike “others, who may not all be Ukrainian,” who are inside city buildings.

The odd man out was Alexander, 30 (he declined to give his last name, saying only “nyet, nyet”). He began expressing a preference for “one Ukraine, like it was before,” when the other two deliberately drowned out his answer, talking over him.

Alexander then mumbled: “I understand that somebody has to survive this war. I want to be that person.”

Moments later, as the three walked away, there was an astonishing sight — the sky suddenly appeared filled with confetti.

As the white dots drew nearer, they shaped up to be thousands of leaflets airdropped by the government in Kyiv as a “Survival Guide” to the people of Slavyansk.

“Don’t come near government buildings,” the one-pager warned. “First you will be a human shield, then you will be a hostage. For Russian terrorists, the more victims the better.”

It was in the mercurial aftermath of the landing leaflets that the Star found itself accosted Thursday.

Later, upon finding safe haven for the night, came the lone great news of the day: the release of Vice News journalist Simon Ostrovosky after four days in the custody of the separatists. He left Slavyansk in a CBC van.

Ostrovosky told CBC he had been held with some 10 other local journalists, who remain in custody. He was “beaten and blindfolded at the start of his ordeal” but treatment improved as the days wore on.

He is lucky. We were much luckier.

By the way, Mikhail, our interpreter? That’s not his real name.

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