Undeclared wars, informal wars, civil wars, are often even more of a playground for grotesques than conflicts of a more conventional type, probably because they represent even more of an unraveling of the social order.

In this respect, the war (and that’s what it is) in eastern Ukraine is no exception. We have seen the emergence of figures such as Igor Strelkov, the curious Russian operative who appears to head up the ‘separatist’ forces in the region, a figure who is both fantasist—a keen (Russian) Civil War reenactor—and, it appears, someone who is all too dangerously real (this BBC report refers to service “in Chechnya, Serbia and Trans-Dniester”).

And then there’s Igor Bezler (“Bes” or “The Demon” ), the man who might have been in charge of the unit that shot down Flight MH 17, interviewed here by Shaun Walker for the Guardian. Here’s an extract:

Periodically, fighters came dashing up the stairs with news for the boss. Before they entered his office, they had to leave their telephones and weapons on a table. One man with a Cossack fur hat deposited two pistols, a Kalashnikov, a foot-long dagger and an iPhone 5 on the table before he was allowed into the Demon’s inner sanctum.While we waited, a group of fighters made us tea in plastic cups with a lilac-coloured kettle, and we talked about life in the warzone. The rumble of shelling in the distance was audible. It had been getting closer every day, said the fighters, as the Ukrainian army continued retaking towns, not without civilian loss of life. Some of the fighters were locals; others had come from Russia and attended a training camp in Rostov, across the border, before being sent to the Demon….

One was a local who had lived in Moscow and worked as a lighting engineer for photo shoots. He found holding up an umbrella all day demeaning work, and longed for something more meaningful. When the insurgency started, he returned to his home town, and now he looked every inch the fighter, with a flowing beard, irregular fatigues, and a waistcoat with pockets for knives and ammunition.The fighters showed me a room in disarray, filing cabinets tipped over and documents strewn across the floor. In the corner, incongruously, was a petting zoo of 10 rabbits. One of them was a huge, white specimen that the fighters had nicknamed Yatsenyuk, after the leader of the Maidan protests in Kiev, who went on to become prime minister and resigned last week. They said they planned to skin, cook and eat Yatsenyuk soon. It was unclear if they were joking. In the bathroom, instead of toilet paper, a copy of the Ukrainian legal code sat on the holder, half of its pages ripped out….

The Demon materialised outside the rooms holding the hostages and told us he was ready to talk, but as we turned to walk to his office, he became agitated over the question of why he keeps hostages.

He looked at us with furious eyes.”The only reason they are here is because they are Ukrainian army soldiers,” he said, gesturing at the rooms with the hostages in. “Those who are fighting with the Ukrainian army, we keep as prisoners. Those who are fighting with volunteer battalions, we question them and then shoot them on the spot. Why should we show any pity to them?”His voice grew louder as he grew more angry. “You should see what they have done to my people. They chop off their heads and s*** in the helmets! They are fascists! So why should we stand on ceremony with them? Questioning, an execution, that’s it. I will hang those f****** from lampposts!”

By this point he was shouting at the top of his voice, and suddenly noticed that the Russian journalist I was with had her Dictaphone on, and that I was making notes in my notebook. He grabbed the Dictaphone from her hands and ordered one of the fighters to throw it at the wall. Pulling my notebook from my hands, he began to rip out the pages frantically. Protesting only made things worse. He barked commands at his subordinates: “Burn their notebooks! Seize their electronics! Search everything for compromising material and then destroy it! If you find anything, execute them as spies!”

Working in eastern Ukraine has been difficult for all journalists and anger and threats are commonplace. This was the first time, however, that I felt a very real sense of danger. “Don’t think for one minute I will hesitate to have you shot,” he yelled at the pair of us…..

Mercifully, this conflict has yet to generate an Ungern-Sternberg, the unnervingly bizarre military commander (and, briefly, ruler of Mongolia) who was one of the worst of the many monsters given their moment by the (real) Russian Civil War, but I have no doubt that such men are still out there, waiting to see what opportunity will bring.