Russia maintains silence on Ukraine 'coup' as leader of separatist Luhansk region 'flees to Moscow'

You would always know when you were entering Luhansk People’s Republic, the Russian-backed separatist statelet in east Ukraine. It was the point that the sunflower fields turned into an apocalyptic mass of metal. Rusting factories the size of planets – some working, some not – marked the entry point into a new, strange world. It was the frontier of wild and gruesome lands. Few journalists ever made it past.