On March 25th, President Poroshenko accepted Igor Kolomoisky’s resignation. Kolomoisky took the news quite well. Photograph by MIKHAIL PALINCHAK / EPA

Late last month, two videos appeared on YouTube that seemed to enact, in real time, the struggle between the old and new orders in Ukraine. The star of both videos was the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, whose fortune comes from banking, aviation, media, and oil and gas. His power is not limited to the business world; in March 2014, he was appointed the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where he used his wealth and influence to quell separatism, keep the violence in the neighboring regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from spreading westward, and protect his own financial interests. He accomplished this, in part, by providing substantial funding and assistance to some of the volunteer battalions that have been compensating for the inadequacies of the Ukrainian Army.

In mid-March of this year, Ukraine’s government put in place reforms meant to improve corporate governance, curb the power of oligarchs, and, in particular, to reduce Kolomoisky’s authority over the oil-and-gas sector. Kolomoisky wasn’t pleased, and on March 19th, Radio Liberty (a branch of Radio Free Europe that was founded as an American news source for the Soviet Union) posted his first YouTube hit.

The video opens with a group of men, who are dressed like soldiers, carrying boxes, sports bags, and what appear to be firearms into the headquarters of the state-owned oil-pipeline company UkrTransNafta. Its C.E.O., a Kolomoisky ally, had just been replaced, meaning that Kolomoisky would lose his considerable influence over the company. Kolomoisky is then seen leaving the building, flanked by thick-necked men in black.

Radio Liberty’s Serhiy Andrushko, one of several journalists at the scene, asked what the governor was doing at a state-owned company at night.

A reasonable question. But Kolomoisky, who is known for his talent for invective, exploded with rage. Despite clear signs that he himself was engaged in an illegal raid, he claimed that he was saving the company from corporate raiders and Russian “saboteurs.” The absurdity of his argument was overshadowed by its obscenity.

“Why don’t you ask how the corporate raid on UkrTransNafta happened? And how Russians infiltrated the place? Or you just want to fucking see Kolomoisky? We liberated the UkrTransNafta building from Russian saboteurs. And you and your Liberty sit here and fucking guard it, like some bimbo with her cheating husband.” It wasn’t journalists or Westernizers who would save Ukraine, it seemed, but brave oligarchs.

Shocked, Andrushko remained silent.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Kolomoisky taunted him. “Do you have any questions? Or did your tongue get lost in your ass? You’re Radio Liberty—you broke up the Soviet Union, threw out the Bolsheviks!”

Many thousands of people watched the video. Serhiy Leshchenko, an M.P. and investigative journalist who is one of Kolomoisky’s harshest critics, argued that Kolomoisky’s attack on the Radio Liberty journalist would mark the end of his career. “Radio Liberty is supported by taxes paid by American citizens,” Leshchenko wrote on March 19th on Facebook, the preferred mode of communication for Ukrainian journalists, activists, and politicians. “The Ukrainian budget is also being rescued using taxes paid by American citizens. American leaders, who are sharing taxpayer money with Ukraine, really don’t like it when you insult journalists. Especially American radio stations that are meant to be defending democratic values around the world.” Ukraine’s government would soon get a call, Leshchenko said, from the American government, telling them they had to choose between corrupt oligarchs and Western values.

On the morning of March 20th, Leshchenko got a tip that armed men in camouflage and bulletproof vests had arrived at the Kiev headquarters of Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s largest oil and gas producer. Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank Group has a forty-two per cent stake in the company. The men spent the weekend securing the building: they brought in supplies, blocked the entries, and even welded metal grills onto the front entries. One of the men told Leshchenko that he was from the Dnipro-1 Battalion, which has been funded largely by Kolomoisky. Dnipro-1 representatives and government officials denied that the men came from the battalion, taking the allegation as a grave insult to patriotic volunteer fighters. But many people feared that the direst predictions about the volunteer battalions—that their oligarch backers would use them to seize power and resources—had come true. Kolomoisky had encouraged these fears, having recently told some Ukrainian officials that he was ready to send battalions from the war zone to defend his financial interests.

The second video of the week was filmed on the night of March 22nd, when the M.P. Mustafa Nayyem, a former investigative journalist, arrived at Ukrnafta to try to find out what was going on. (Nayyem is widely credited with helping to start the Maidan movement, by writing a Facebook post summoning people to Kiev’s Independence Square to protest then President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an E.U. Association agreement.) Nayyem’s visit to Ukrnafta was filmed from many angles, by a crowd of journalists who had gathered outside.

After being forcibly denied entry to the building, Nayyem ran into Kolomoisky.

“Hello,” Kolomoisky said, as if greeting a favorite nephew.

“Hello,” Nayyem answered. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to watch you!” Kolomoisky replied. Smiling and white-bearded, with eyes that sparkled behind his spectacles, Kolomoisky looked like Santa Claus in a black leather jacket. “And what are you doing here?” he asked Nayyem.

“I came to see what’s happening.”

Kolomoisky beamed. “Let’s go look together!” He put his arm around Nayyem’s shoulders and started walking him down the street.

Nayyem allowed Kolomoisky to guide him for a few moments. “Take your hands off me!” he said at last, half laughing and half angry. He pulled out of Kolomoisky’s embrace and stopped in front of the entrance to the building. Nayyem kept moving to enter the building, and Kolomoisky kept inviting him for coffee. Nayyem was playing the role of a journalist, or of a type of politician that is not familiar in Ukraine; Kolomoisky seemed to be asking him to be the old kind of politician, the kind that cuts deals in private. (“Drinking coffee with Kolomoisky” soon became a running joke online.)

Under pressure from Nayyem, Kolomoisky finally said that Ukrnafta was preparing for a corporate raid. Barricading the office was a matter of prevention, he said, and the men in camouflage were just company security. Were they armed? Probably, he shrugged.

This video, too, racked up hits online. It is fascinating, in part, because the late-night disagreement between Kolomoisky and Nayyem is emblematic of the conflict between what Ukraine has been and what it hopes to become. Kolomoisky, who has admitted to making his fortune by illegal means during the wild days of the nineteen-nineties, and who was involved in violent corporate raids as recently as 2006, redeemed himself in the eyes of many, during his governorship, by helping to defend the nation. But his decision to seize state-controlled companies by force was seen as a slap in the face to the Maidan movement, a return to the bad old days. It also underscored the continued vast economic inequality between oligarchs and ordinary Ukrainians, who are poorer than ever. With I.M.F. austerity in place, Ukraine is reducing already paltry pensions and decreasing heating subsidies: some Ukrainians fear that they will have to start choosing between groceries and heat.