Velyka Novosilka is an agricultural hamlet of sixteen hundred people, a charming and archetypically Soviet provincial town with nearly empty streets and an unusually large Lenin statue in its central square. It sits in a flat expanse of green farmland, an hour and a half by car from Donetsk, the regional capital and the epicenter of an insurrection against the government in Kiev. In Donetsk, and in towns to the northeast like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, pro-Russian separatist militias have set up armed roadblocks and barricaded themselves in government buildings.

In recent weeks, the fighting in eastern Ukraine has taken on its own grinding, self-perpetuating momentum, independent of developments taking place in Kiev, Moscow, or the West. An array of militia forces on both sides launch attacks almost daily, and within each respective camp—insurgent and pro-Kiev—the proliferating paramilitary brigades do not necessarily communicate, or even care for one another. Earlier this week, on May 21st, a group of unidentified anti-Kiev insurgents launched an attack in Blahodatne that killed sixteen Ukrainian soldiers, a sign of their deadly strength. A few months ago, larger powers—whether the Kremlin or Ukrainian oligarchs who thought that a rebellion in the east could further their own interests—may have had some operational control or sway over the militias in eastern Ukraine, but that influence appears to have waned. The men with guns are the ones in charge now. That is a thoroughly depressing development for Ukraine. Even if there is a negotiated solution to the ongoing conflict—itself an unlikely development—it may not be sufficient to halt the cycle of violence across the Donetsk region.

Velyka Novosilka lies to the west, farther from the strongest, most concentrated hostility toward Kiev along the border with Russia. Here, the encroachment of separatist feeling has been more subtle, and certainly less forceful. On the morning of May 14th, around fifty people gathered in front of the regional administration building for a rally in support of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the imaginary breakaway state declared by separatist leaders earlier this month after a dubious “referendum” on May 11th. They chanted and made speeches, and, soon enough, the red-blue-and-black flag of the would-be republic hung from the flagpole out front. The handful of regional bureaucrats inside the building didn’t do anything to stop them; the police were similarly idle. The passive response seemed understandable. Why risk your life to defend a distant, ineffectual government in Kiev that isn’t very popular in the east, especially when it seems possible that the Donetsk People’s Republic—or simple anarchy—will win out after all?

If that was Velyka Novosilka’s counter-revolution—the local version of the pushback against the Maidan protests that toppled the former President Victor Yanukovych, in late February—it was followed by a counter-counter-revolution, led by a small band of disgruntled residents. One of them, Sergei Komburov, a forty-three-year-old retired policeman, told me that his group, which numbered about ten, had come together even before the protests began in Kiev late last year. “We were against these authorities even before Maidan, and after Maidan nothing changed, all the corrupt people stayed the same,” he said. I met Komburov and his allies one afternoon last week, at a Soviet-era collective farm that served as a kind of headquarters and staging base, before they set out on a mission to recapture the regional-administration building. Komburov, who had taken to bee-keeping on his family land since his retirement from the police, told me that the separatist demonstration in town had been a ruse, an attempt by the old élite of the rural community to hold on to power. Its ringleaders, he said, consisted of the area’s former deputy police chief, members of the local branch of the Communist Party, and businessmen involved in the illegal scrap-metal trade.

Komburov and his compatriots were intent on raising the Ukrainian flag again and restoring Kiev’s writ over the town. Their other objective was to install Alexander Arykh, a baby-faced twenty-eight-year-old lawyer, as the regional administrator for Velyka Novosilka. Arykh had been appointed to the post by the government in Kiev, but was unable to take office so long as the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic hung outside the administration building. Komburov was also expecting his own appointment from the ministry of internal affairs in Kiev, as the new regional police chief—he would be leaving his bees and returning to the force. Such are the times, he said.

In anticipation of resistance from the separatist forces, Komburov’s group had appealed for some extra muscle from pro-Kiev figures in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, whose governor, the colorful oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has helped to finance the creation of loyalist militias with his own cash. Around two dozen members of the Donbass Battalion, a volunteer paramilitary group formed in recent weeks to counter pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, were dispatched to assist Komburov. The Donbass Battalion is one of a handful of new armed factions—militias with the mission of combating separatist insurgents and retaking territory for Kiev, but with unclear orders and legal authority. The Donbass fighters looked like a simultaneously ragtag and fearsome bunch: they wore mismatched black uniforms with balaclavas pulled over their heads, and carried an assortment of weaponry that ranged from Kalashnikov assault rifles to a Second World War-era carbine and a wooden crate full of grenades.

Before the mission, I spoke with Semyon Semenchenko, the Battalion’s thirty-eight-year-old commander. He told me that he was a former officer in the Ukrainian Navy, who had years ago gone into private business in Donetsk. He decided to head the militia after he saw the government’s weakness and its inability to counter the creeping rebel takeover of the east. “They weren’t doing anything, so we decided to do it ourselves,” he said. “Our goal is the defense of our homeland, and that is of a higher order than following any one particular law.” It’s a troubling operating philosophy, given the murky, lawless nature of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where militias under nobody’s control do battle with one another. The men fighting in paramilitary formations like the Donbass Battalion believe they can save Ukraine from disintegration—but they could be what pushes it deeper into internecine conflict.

At around four in the afternoon, Komburov and his men, along with the gunmen from the Donbass Battalion, piled into a handful of cars and headed down a dusty, potholed road toward Velyka Novosilka. I caught a ride in an old, clunky van with two local farmhands crouching in the back, wooden rifles at their feet. After a short drive into town, the small convoy pulled up outside the police station. The Donbass fighters took up positions in the grass by the side of the road, stopping approaching cars and aiming their guns at the upper windows of the police building.

A crew from Vice News captured what happened inside: led by Semenchenko, the Donbass Battalion tore through the building, pushing the police officers inside to the floor. Semenchenko assembled them all and berated them. “We are fucking pissed off by your prostitute politics,” he said. “Who has forgotten their oath of loyalty to Ukraine? I will take your silence to be representative of your shame… There will be a Ukrainian state here, this is Ukrainian land.” A few minutes later, the Donbass men filed back onto the street, and rushed in the direction of the administration building. Locals stopped to watch as armed men in masks ran across the town square. One of Komburov’s men, Alexander, pulled down the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic and ripped it up with his hands. “Fucking separatists,” he said. He reached for a Ukrainian flag he had brought in his car, and, as the afternoon turned into evening, the blue and yellow of Ukraine were raised over Velyka Novosilka once more.