PEREVALSK, Ukraine—They don’t call Nikolai Kozitsyn “Daddy” for nothing. In this rebel-held eastern Ukrainian town, the mustachioed Cossack lords it over the locals and pays little heed to the bosses of the breakaway movement.
Patches of Ukraine’s depressed industrial basin in the east — in the throes of a pro-Russian separatist insurgency — have fallen under the control of such warlords, who run towns as their personal fiefdoms.
Accountable seemingly to nobody, except perhaps Russia, these domains are a further destabilizing element in a six-month conflict that has left more than 4,000 dead and displaced a million.
Kozitsyn, a stocky 58-year old Russian …read more
Source: The Epoch Times
