“Brothers and Sisters!” began the note stuck to a wall on the main street of Novoazovsk. “Greetings from the Liberation Army of Novorossiya. We have come to stay, don’t believe rumours that we will leave town. Our task is to go further; your task is to build a peaceful, honest and decent life.”

Down the street, a Soviet-built tank sat baking in the late summer sun, its green turret emblazoned with a red banner crossed with diagonal blue stripes trimmed with white: the flag of Novorossiya.

It now waves over a growing swath of eastern Ukraine, as pro-Moscow insurgents drive back government forces, backed by what Kiev and western powers refer to as heavily armed units of the Russian military.

Imperial dreams

Novorossiya (‘New Russia’) was the tsarist-era name for parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that Russia seized in the late 18th century, and it remains a seductive notion for nationalists who grow misty-eyed over dreams of imperial and naval glory, Catherine the Great’s push to the Black Sea and the romantic port of Odessa.

But Novorossiya and its flag were symbols beloved of a marginal few, until Russia's president Vladimir Putin dusted them off during his annual televised question-and-answer session in April, just weeks after annexing Crimea.

Muttering that “God knows why“ this land became part of Ukraine within the Soviet Union, Putin told his nation that, “Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained . . . part of a single space, a single people.”

Rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk took his pledge to defend all Russian-speakers in Ukraine as approval for their fight to seize regions that had played little part in Ukraine’s pro-EU revolution, fearing it would lead to discrimination against Russian speakers and cut close ties with Russia.

For months afterwards, however, Putin made no mention of Novorossiya and, despite enjoying steady flow of arms and fighters from Russia, the militants were forced back by Ukrainian troops.

Kiev claims it was on the verge of victory when Russia poured soldiers and armour over the border a fortnight ago, the dramatic shift coinciding with Putin officially addressing the rebels for the first time as the “militia of Novorossiya”, and demanding that Kiev discuss “statehood” for southeast Ukraine.

Righting ‘historical wrongs’

In the seaside town of Novoazovsk this week, rebels vowed to soon fly the battle flag of reborn “New Russia” in Mariupol, a major port 40km to the west, and then Kiev and even, if necessary, Lviv – the heartland of Ukraine’s revolution, close to its border with Poland, the European Union and Nato.

“The idea of Ukraine as a country is worth nothing,” said the leader of the rebel unit controlling Novoazovsk, who uses the nom de guerre Svat, or “Matchmaker”.

“We want to reunite the historical lands of Novorossiya,” he said, lighting a cigarette outside the tyre repair garage that is his headquarters.

“We must have Kiev, which we consider to be the mother of Russian cities. I’m from Odessa, and my three boys there will live in Novorossiya and speak Russian.

“And if the Kiev junta puts pressure on our Russian-speaking brothers in Lvov, we will go there too,” said Svat, using the Russian name [Novorossiya] for a city that is a bastion of Ukrainian language and culture.

Impassioned talk of Novorossiya, the righting of historical wrongs, and Russia’s destiny as a nation and special role in world history are now common in Russian state media, even as they remain mute on the soldiers secretly fighting and dying in Ukraine.

The likes of Alexander Dugin and Alexander Prokhanov, who would be seen as far-right crackpots in the west and were marginal figures in Russia for decades, now find the Kremlin beckoning their mystical and militaristic nationalism into the mainstream.

Just this week, Dugin visited the revered Valaam monastery with Igor Girkin – aka “Strelkov” – erstwhile military leader of Ukraine’s separatists; Putin has a “spiritual mentor” at Valaam, a remote archipelago on a lake near the Finnish border.

At the same time, residents of Mariupol were either leaving the 500,000-strong city or preparing for a rebel attack, as artillery boomed and columns of smoke rose from skirmishes along the road east to Novoazovsk.

On Thursday, several thousand people joined a “rally for unity” in Mariupol, waving Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag, singing the national anthem, and denouncing Putin as a tyrant intent on wrecking their country’s bid to escape centuries of Russian domination.

Ukraine has its own extremists – including members of the far-right Azov battalion defending Mariupol – but its revolution was driven by millions of people who want the country to be more independent, more democratic and less corrupt.

“We don’t want war but we are patriots and we will defend our country. If we don’t, Putin will take it all, piece by piece,” said Lena at the Mariupol rally.

“Some of the older generation here still support Russia, and dream of going back to the Soviet Union and cheap sausage. They don’t know what Russia is like now. Putin doesn’t care for his own people, never mind anyone else.”

If the west wants to help Ukraine, said local man Andrei, “it should forget the rules and let us join Nato and the EU immediately. But Obama and Merkel are too slow. They need to understand that Putin, a KGB man, only understands force. Later, they will regret not being tougher on him.”

Banners and placards calling for peace were everywhere at the rally but the people holding them had little hope that yesterday’s ceasefire talks could bring lasting calm.

“Putin will never let us become a modern, prosperous European country,” said Andrei. “A gangster is only comfortable dealing with other gangsters.”

As in many Ukrainian towns, a statue of Vladimir Lenin was recently toppled in Mariupol. On its empty plinth someone has paraphrased in white paint an aphorism attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: "We should become the changes that we want to see in this world."

Backed and blessed by the Kremlin, Novorossiya is on the move. But “New Russia” cannot live with the new Ukraine. It appears to be a fight to the death.