IN CONFLICT, physical changes often happen quickly: a road is closed, an apartment block flattened. Mental changes, meanwhile, happen slowly and imperceptibly. It has taken a long time for the realisation to sink in that Ukraine's “crisis” is really a war, and quite possibly a long one. “Too much blood has been spilled to speak of peace,” says ‘Dushman’, a senior rebel commander in Donetsk. When this correspondent first met Dushman last spring, he spoke of how to keep Ukraine united, and called himself Ukrainian. Now Dushman keeps Ukrainians as prisoners. “We took nine yesterday,” he says with a grin.
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