I doubt the civilian people there support any of the sides of the conflict. What it really is is some masked a**holes who want to play a war vs. regular Ukrainian army. It's not a surprise that the latter should demonstrate a bigger ability to smash the enemy than the former one, which is eventually going to happen. It's not very smart to compare the area to Chechnya, as the masked clowns just lack so many attributes the Chechen fighters had.