KRAMATORSK, Ukraine – Yuriy Tkachenko, his wife Iryna and several women in the neighborhood got fed up watching masked men with Kalashnikovs drive in and out of a mostly abandoned brick factory in front of their houses in Kramatorsk, a northern Donetsk Oblast city under control of Kremlin-backed separatists for more than a month.So, on May 19, they got together and bravely approached a minivan with armed men and demanded that they leave.

The Kalashnikov-carrying men, wearing the orange-black St. George’s stripes that have become symbols of the separatist movement, tried to frighten the civilians with threats and by pointing guns at them. But seeing that the residents were not intimidated, they drove away.