Kharkiv’s colorful and controversial mayor Gennady “Gepa” Kernes returned home on Tuesday, some seven weeks after being shot in mysterious circumstances. He was met at the airport with a hero’s welcome by up to five thousand Kharkiv locals, who had been bussed in specially for the event. A much smaller crowd, eggs and posters in hand, assembled on the fringes. They were there for a different reason—to protest Kernes’ involvement in bloody clashes that shook the city over the winter.

Kharkiv today is hard to compare to the one of late February. Then, the separatist scenario seemed very real: Russian flags had showed up here first, some time before they did in Slavyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk, today's rebel strongholds. There was also much that bound the city to Russia. Most of the city's 1.5 million citizens identify closely with Russia, the language, and with family and friends who live just across the border. The city has strong bilateral trade, political, educational and cultural links with Russia, not to mention its shifty role as a gateway for drugs and contraband.

During Kharkiv’s troubled winter months, the Oplot Fight Club was a particularly controversial point on the city map. Located in downtown Kharkiv near to the hippodrome, the Fight Club was the centerpiece of an improbable conglomeration that combined hard-core, pro-Russian violence, with supermarket retail, “audit” services, medical clinics and sports clubs. Oplot’s leader was a former cop named Yevgeny Zhilin, once suspected of organising an attempt on Kernes’ life, but later noted for business and collaboration with the tenacious mayor.

For much of the winter months, Oplot’s anti-EuroMaidan position coincided with that of Kernes. During the worst days of the troubles, the group infamously sent several dozen fighters to the capital to assist Yanukovych’s riot police; these were the notorious “titushki” thugs, who shot, beat and threw hard missiles at unarmed demonstrators. The Kharkiv police later returned the favour by turning a blind eye to Oplot’s violent assault of pro-Ukrainian rallies in February and March.

Today, however, the Oplot Fight Club stands symbolically deserted. Colourful banners have been replaced by bare walls, painted Ukrainian flags, anti-Russian, and anti-fascist slogans. Inside the building, the viewing gallery has been broken up, furniture trashed and the cage gutted. Zhilin is on the run in Moscow, and over a hundred Oplot militants are in jail. Many of those who weren’t rounded up abandoned the city and joined fighters in neighboring Donetsk, where they have since played a leading role in the rebel uprising.