Ukrainas ryska talibaner

Women in Ukraine's separatist-held Luhansk region will be arrested if they are seen in cafes, an insurgent warlord has said. - "A woman should be the keeper of the hearth, a mother," Wraith Brigade commander Alexei Mozgovoi says in a video recently posted on YouTube. - "If you want to be true and faithful to your husband, stay home and do your stitching."

This and other radical activity by the separatists have stoked fears that they are on track to becoming "Russia's Taliban." Such a transformation would spell further trouble for the rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine, which is teetering on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and in need of qualified governance rather than ideology.

The few who do fit the bill are being replaced by cooler heads at Moscow's insistence, said Mikhail Remizov, a respected pro-Kremlin analyst at the Institute of National Strategy think tank in Moscow.