With armed men in the polling station, no voter lists, and international observers coming from an organisation concocted the night before the vote, these were no normal elections.

But then the Donetsk People’s Republic is no normal country. It is no country at all, according to most of the world. But the vote for prime minister here and in neighbouring Luhansk region on Sunday was one more step towards creating a new reality on the ground and carving out a chunk of Ukraine that will no longer controlled by Kiev.

“The elected representatives received a mandate to solve the practical tasks regarding the restoration of normal life in the regions,” the foreign ministry said late on Sunday, according to Interfax. The ministry said there should now be dialogue between the rebel regions and Kiev, but there is little appetite for negotiations in Donetsk.

The vote came more than six months after a handful of gunmen began taking over administrative buildings in several eastern cities. Since then, the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions have fought a bloody war against rebels backed with Russian firepower in a conflict that has claimed well over 3,000 lives, many of them civilians.

An agreement in Minsk, Belarus, in September provided for a ceasefire, and a 12-point plan was drafted to allow the territories to remain inside Ukraine but with special status.

Several weeks later, the plan remains on paper, with each side accusing the other of numerous violations. All the while, the areas under rebel control drift further away from a solution in which they could be part of Ukraine. In the days leading up to the vote, isolated clashes between Ukrainian and rebel forces continued, including just outside Donetsk, where a group of Ukrainian soldiers continue to hold on to part of the airport despite continual rebel assault. The rumble of artillery from the airport is audible in central Donetsk most days.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Europe’s main election observing body, said it would have nothing to do with the elections. Undeterred, a newly created organisation appeared, named the ASCE, and mainly made up of far-right European politicians, who arrived and gave the elections two thumbs up. The fact that neo-Nazi European politicians are the only people east Ukraine has found to back its supposed uprising against the “fascist” Ukrainian authorities is one of the many paradoxes of the situation.

Despite the surreal nature of the vote, there is no doubt that, among the older generation at least, there was great enthusiasm for it, perhaps less as an endorsement of the Donetsk republic and more as a message to Kiev that the region would never again be part of Ukraine.

In Ilovaysk, which saw some of the worst battles of the conflict, with hundreds of Ukrainian forces surrounded by rebel and Russian troops in a siege that lasted weeks, there was a huge crowd at School No 13, one of three polling stations to open in the town. Residents said they were voting for a “peaceful future”, which they hoped would eventually involve the region joining together with Russia.

Valentina, a 61-year-old market trader in Ilovaysk, said she had spent 23 days cowering in a cellar with several dozen others, and had been threatened by Ukrainian volunteer battalions who tried to use her and others as human shields and stole mobile phones and other property.

“We are voting so that they never come back here again,” she said. “We have always been Russians, part of Russia, and we don’t need them here.”

Gennady, 61, said he had stayed in his flat for the duration of fighting in Ilovaysk, as his 90-year-old mother was too ill to move.

“It was like Russian roulette; you looked out the window and the neighbouring house is destroyed, but luckily God was kind to me,” he said. “Russia is the most democratic country in the world, and we want to join Russia.”

Most people said they would vote for Alexander Zakharchenko, the acting rebel leader who took over in August after what seemed an attempt by Moscow to replace Russian nationals with locals. Zakharchenko has run on a vague platform promising independence, peace and economic prosperity. On Monday morning, the rebels announced that with all the ballots counted, Zakharchenko had won a convincing victory with around 80% of the vote.

While many, especially among the older generation, have nostalgia for the Soviet Union and see contemporary Russia as its successor, the attitude towards the Donetsk authorities is ambivalent, with many people quietly mentioning that the armed gunmen who run the region now have allowed themselves many liberties. Even among the rebel leaders, there are divisions. The Guardian spoke with a high-ranking rebel commander, originally from Russia, who on condition of anonymity said he believed much of the Donetsk leadership was corrupt and there needed to be a “purge”, which he hoped would be carried out by Russian special forces.

With several competing paramilitary groups linked only under a nominal central command, there is potential for battles between the different groupings to break out in the near future, as the battle for power, influence and money begins in earnest.

The commander admitted rebel forces had been responsible for looting and crimes in many places, and said only through “iron discipline” could there be any hope of creating a new and just state. “In order to learn to live by the New Testament here, we first have to learn to live by the Old Testament: eye for an eye,” he said during an interview in a seized security services building in a town near Donetsk. “If people behave like animals we will treat them like animals.” He said military courts and “troikas” of three judges would sentence people to death for looting and other crimes, and claimed there had been two executions for looting in his town.

“Nobody blames a surgeon for the fact they remove tumours from the body with a scalpel. That is what we are doing here,” he said. He added he was fighting for “the Russian world; the Russian idea”, which he said was standing against a corrupt and decadent United States. He was formerly an officer in the Russian special forces but said he had come to Donetsk as a volunteer, disgusted by the actions of Ukrainian forces and the deaths of Russians in Odessa in May.

The potential for vigilante justice was also highlighted by the disturbing spectacle of a “people’s trial” last week in the town of Alchevsk, in the neighbouring Luhansk region, where rebels brought two alleged rapists on to the stage of the local theatre and asked a crowd of 300 locals to decide whether they should be condemned to death. The assembled masses spared the first man’s life but voted overwhelmingly to execute the second man, amid cheers, and despite the man’s pleas for mercy and the cries of his mother. It is unclear whether the sentence has been carried out.

Aside from implementing revolutionary justice, the main priority for the authorities in these regions is economic. Kiev is unwilling to pay for social payments and infrastructure in regions it does not control, meaning elderly people have not received pensions for several months. Many towns have spent weeks without light and heating as winter approaches.

“We will be blockaded, there will be an embargo, and we will end up in total isolation, like Cuba or North Korea,” said Yuriy Makogon, head of International Economics at Donetsk National University. “Everyone should remember that with no economy, it is impossible for anywhere to survive.”

Russia has displayed little appetite to annex the territory in the way it did Crimea in March, but the hope among the rebels is that financial flows and investment could come from Moscow.

According to the Minsk agreement, Ukraine has given the regions special increased autonomy for a three-year period, but in practice, President Petro Poroshenko appears to have given up on the regions, unable to win a military victory against superior Russian firepower.

Whether the rebels and their Russian backers are satisfied with what they have gained is not clear. There are persistent rumours that the Donetsk forces may attempt to take the key port city of Mariupol, part of Donetsk region under Ukrainian control.

Zakharchenko said last week that if Ukraine did not agree to hand over the city, the rebels would take it by force, and in recent days there have been numerous sightings of a large military convoy, apparently from Russia, travelling though the Donetsk region.

The Guardian saw the convoy, made up of several dozen green military trucks and including artillery systems, near the town of Torez on Saturday.

On the ground, the signs are that Ukraine has resigned itself to losing the territory for some time. At the entrance to the town of Mariinka, just west of Donetsk, a detachment of Ukrainian border guards is stationed who register all who come and go from rebel-held territory. In the adjacent fields, armoured vehicles are visible and trenches have been dug, in a sign that this might be a makeshift border that is here to stay.

“They want to have their cake and eat it,” said Ruslan, one of the guards. “If they want their republic, let them have it. They’ve shouted for so long, let them see what they have created for themselves. We’re tired, we’ve lost too many lives to keep fighting. But they should know there is no way back for them, and they shouldn’t expect us to pay for them.”