The build-up continues and there have been assaults with artillery and mortar fire followed by close fighting in a few areas in the last week. In some cases the attack will last 8, 12 hours or longer.

Some villages have also moved from "buffer" to "separatist" because, well, if a village is in the buffer zone then it's not occupied by either side. It's easy to walk in. A day or two later there's a claim from the LNR or DNR that the Ukrainian forces are too close and they need to move because Minsk requires a buffer zone. The Ukrainian reaction has usually been a fig.

Most people don't care about dead Ukainian forces because they're all fascists. Same for the villagers or townsfolk. It's only when RT complains about shelling of pro-Russian positions--most often in response to artillery fire based in neighborhoods--that people notice.

Of course, the recent action has a political context. Renewal of sanctions by the EU, claims that the Ukrainian side isn't talking enough or making the right concessions during talks. Zakharchenko can one day say that the DNR and LNR are inalienable parts of Ukraine, unlike their demand that designation of the Crimea as part of Ukraine be removed from the Ukrainian territory, and then the next day one of their supporters in Russia says that Ukraine really should be entirely part of Russia (putting Zakharchenko's "inalienable" declaration in new light). But a day or two later Zakharchenko can say that their goal is full independence from Ukraine.

The one constant is that the leaders of the LNR and DNR gain more and more power each day, more and more "scrap" from disassembled factories of those who aren't sufficiently pro-Russian vanishes into Russia, along with coal, and the school system enforces Russification at an increased pace and encourages religious and ethnic nationalism.

It's very Transnistrian, but then again one of the top administrators is a Russian national with former Russian-government service ... and served in Transnistria for a decade, to restore order and structure the economy before showing up in the Donbas.