You might expect the insurgents to be tense and fearful, but I’ve usually found the army to be more on edge. At one roadblock, a suspicious soldier with blazing blue eyes inquired where we had come from and where we were going. Then he abruptly asked my driver: “And what is your opinion of separatism?” When a teenage member of a national army demands to know the political views of the people he is paid to protect, then you know things are going wrong. And the signs are that the “anti-terrorist” operation mounted by Ukraine’s security forces to recapture the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk is coming off the rails.