Oliver Carroll is an independent journalist who covers Russia and Eastern Europe. The former editor in chief of OpenDemocracy Russia, he also worked for the Moscow Times and later was a founding editor of the Russian version of Esquire.

The nearer you get to the frontline, the better the soup. This unexpected principle is one of few that still unify the warring parties in eastern Ukraine. And in the heavily sandbagged military HQ in separatist-held Stakhanov, no amount of artillery fire in nearby Pervomaysk or evident difficulties in the food supply chain can get in the way of cook Galina Dmitrevna’s exceptional borsch.

Dmitrevna is one of six women working 24-7 in three shifts. She does so without respite, feeding dozens of ragged and largely uncommunicative fighters that stream in and out of her kitchen. The only time she seems to look up is to register emotion at the news coming from the other side of the front, as dutifully transmitted by “Cossack Radio.” The updates are unrelentingly gloomy: “Two pensioners have been violently robbed by Ukrainian soldiers”; “Ukrainian teachers are being forced to work without pay”; “The World Bank is discussing ending financial assistance to Ukraine.” Only Russia is the beneficiary of good news: The West is now, apparently, ready to remove all sanctions. It’s an exclusive of sorts.


A few doors down from the kitchen is the smoke-filled nerve center of Commander Pavel Dremov’s military operation. Dremov is a 37-year old former bricklayer who has emerged as the savior of Stakhanov, a hitherto-forgotten mining town in the northwest corner of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic. What is interesting is that the commander has styled himself in complete opposition to his fellow separatists in Luhansk and what he calls its “shady businessmen,” who deal “money, power, and ceasefires with the Kiev ‘junta.’” Dremov has offered Stakhanov citizens an alternative vision—a new, socialist, neo-Soviet “Cossack” republic that works for the people, especially the poor and elderly. And, as goes without saying, one that ignores any talk of a ceasefire deal.

It’s a call that falls on easy ears in Stakhanov. Named after the Soviet shock worker famed for record coal production (fallaciously, historians say), the town’s best days are long behind it. For a start, this most-famous-of-all-mining towns no longer has any working mine to speak of. The decline of Stakhanov, which accelerated during the post-Soviet 1990s, saw working men and women undergo a humiliating transformation from the Soviet Union’s most privileged class to one living among a cancer of crime, poverty, gambling and oligarchy. Many Stakhanov citizens were forced to travel to Russia in search of any old seasonal work to support their families. Others reluctantly acquiesced to the new ways of working. In short, Stakhanov was looking for a break; and when Ukraine fell into revolutionary anarchy earlier this year, some of its more active citizens took their chance.

The first separatist tent appeared on the main square in Stakhanov on February 17, almost a month before the Crimea referendum, and a fortnight before mass rallies began in Donetsk. Despite legal threats from Kiev, there was little local intervention to stem the initial tide. By the beginning of April, the movement had reached critical mass over in the regional capital, Luhansk, where several of Stakhanov’s citizens were leading the charge. One, Valery Bolotov, an associate of the region’s most controversial oligarch and politician, Oleksandr Yefremov, would go on to become the head of the breakaway Luhansk Republic (he was removed in August, and remains out of favor). Another local boy, Oleksiy Karyakin, was one of a group of activists whose arrest served as the pretext for the storming of the Luhansk Security Services headquarters on April 6. This was a key turning-point in the conflict—it led to its immediate militarization when the headquarters’s arms room was unlocked a day later. Karyakin remains a leading figure in the Luhansk “People’s Government” today.

Eight months on from those modest February beginnings, Stakhanov’s main square is again in focus, this time filled elbow-to-elbow for a mass rally. There are perhaps three thousand locals here, and the acoustics are so terrible that within ten minutes everyone is suffering a collective migraine. The event has been styled as an opportunity for the converted to ask questions of their new leaders; for others, it is a moment to assess the colors of their new self-appointed authorities. It is a tightly controlled operation. Plain-clothed agents with radio headpieces mingle among the crowds. Cossack soldiers—most, it seems, sporting battle scars—strut the stage menacingly. Occasionally, they huddle to share a joke or relay information, no doubt relating to the now heavy artillery fire in neighboring Debaltsevo and Pervomaysk. One Cossack soldier decides to show off his newborn baby girl to the crowd.

Commander Dremov’s men perform carrier pigeon roles, heading into the crowd to collect written questions for the People’s Commander. Sometimes, they slip in a helpful planted question of their own, such as: “When will we liberate (Ukrainian-controlled) Lysychansk and Severdonetsk”? (Dremov smiles, before replying “soon”). The straight-talking bricklayer clearly enjoys playing to the crowd: “We’ve had enough corruption and slavery here for a century! We’re not fools—neither Poroshenko nor Putin are interested in an honest country!” Nothing would be allowed to get in the way of destiny, he declared: “We will build a Cossack republic right here in Stakhanov!”

“So we’re all Cossacks now?” whispers a man standing to my right. “Shh, Vitya,” says the woman alongside him. “Think before you open your mouth.”

It wouldn’t be right to say that the dissenting voice represented anything other than a fringe concern in Stakhanov. Dremov’s populist, anti-oligarchic rhetoric seemed to electrify the crowd. They chanted his name. They ahh-ed in delight as he pressed local boy Karyakin—appearing as the representative from “over there” in Luhansk—for a firmer promise on pensions. They applauded when he announced that local businessman turned “People’s Mayor” Sergey Zhevlakov had signed a ten-year “contract” pledging his services to the town, and that he would be supervised every step of the way. “People think that it will be the same as before. It won’t! If you have any information on traitors stealing from the people, tell us! There won’t be any thieves here in Stakhanov!”

As soon as Dremov leaves the stage, he is embraced and cuddled by an elderly woman. She clings hard onto his side for several minutes as he continues to field questions. Another middle-aged woman, of rounded, well-worn features and dyed red hair, is the next to approach. “I know this fascist, Banderovist, pro-Ukrainian woman,” she says. “We need to sort her out. I have her address.” Dremov takes a moment, before declaring that there was nothing he could do. “But she pushed an old babushka, I saw it with my own eyes,” protests the woman. The commander is unmoved. “Your acquaintance can’t be punished for her views alone. If she is not actively working against us, she will be left alone.” It was not immediately clear how much the presence of a foreign journalist influenced Dremov’s unexpectedly liberal position.

Back inside Stakhanov military headquarters, Dremov speaks with disarming charm and fluency. He is only ever ruffled by a question about his campaign, which, it was gently suggested, had taken on cultish qualities. He insisted he was not interested in popularity contests, let alone politics: “You say I am Pavel Dremov this, and Pavel Dremov that, but the fact is they are Pavel Dremov. We are all Pavel Dremov.” He had every intention on returning to being a bricklayer when the war was over, he claimed. The same could not be said about those in Luhansk: “Those people forget where they came from. You saw Karyakin squirming earlier on at the rally? It was like watching a politician from Kiev. He couldn’t answer a question straight.”

A day earlier, the press people in Luhansk had been at pains to deny any rift with Stakhanov, claiming talk of a split was the work of pro-Ukrainian propaganda. Dremov made it clear, however, that all was not well. “Do you want to know why I don’t like the Luhansk Republic? It’s because they have got used to doing nothing, to giving nothing,” he said. Greed and “seats of power” were the only reason they had signed the ceasefire deal. Why else would they agree to such a soft deal, he argued—at a time that Ukrainian forces were in panicky retreat?

There are few absolutes in eastern Ukraine today, and it would be wrong to suggest other separatist leaders do not share a desire to expand territories beyond current borders. But the deal on a “ceasefire”—which in reality exists only in areas sufficiently removed from strategic front lines—does seem to have divided the separatists. One camp, supporting the deal, consists of relatively more disciplined and Moscow-dependent forces, and prioritizes rebuilding before any further military moves. The second camp, relatively more belligerent and independent, advocates immediate military advance, complains about the other side being money-obsessed, and freely talks about the Ukrainian conflict being a prelude to World War III.

Without mass Russian military backing—which does not appear to be part of the current script, though that may change—breakaway forces like Dremov’s Cossacks are unlikely to make significant inroads. Ukrainian forces have regrouped and dug in two strong lines of defenses to the North and West. But the resolution of the standoff between the various camps is of vital importance to the broader viability of the new de facto separatist statelets. Economies are already dysfunctional, with significant pressures on cash flow amid few concrete promises from Russia; war damage is serious and debilitating; and winter and the first snows have made their introductions. If the authorities are unable to protect the population from major humanitarian disaster—or at the very least, if they are unable to blame the Ukrainians for it—a currently supportive public may well move against them, and quickly.

If that happens, come spring things may well look very different for Commander Dremov and his Cossack republic dream.