Cossack Separatist Republics

Alongside their more famous DPR and LPR brethren, there are several smaller Cossack separatist republics. Ethnic Cossacks, whose native language employs many Ukrainian words, are the traditional inhabitants of the steppe — lands that extend from Ukraine to deep into Russia’s interior.

Their fervor for restoring the high-esteem that Cossack culture once held has grown both in Russia and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Cossacks setting up shop in small towns like Stakhanov in eastern Ukraine are from Russia and do not necessarily identify with the other separatist forces in the region, whose motives they distrust. Here’s an excerpt from British journalist Oliver Carroll’s dispatch:

A few doors down from the kitchen is the smoke-filled nerve center of Commander Pavel Dremov’s military operation. Dremov is a 37-year old former bricklayer who has emerged as the savior of Stakhanov, a hitherto-forgotten mining town in the northwest corner of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic. What is interesting is that the commander has styled himself in complete opposition to his fellow separatists in Luhansk and what he calls its “shady businessmen,” who deal “money, power, and ceasefires with the Kiev ‘junta.’” Dremov has offered Stakhanov citizens an alternative vision — a new, socialist, neo-Soviet “Cossack” republic that works for the people, especially the poor and elderly. And, as goes without saying, one that ignores any talk of a ceasefire deal.

Russian Cossacks were some of the most visible figures leading up to the annexation of Crimea as well as the early days of the separatist uprisings in eastern Ukraine. The latest groups to arrive in Ukraine, in particular those in Luhansk, appear to be largely on their own in terms of their arms and basic supplies.

Hromadske International co-founder

As they have made clear, in the best of Cossack traditions, they plan on serving but remaining free. Their forces from Russia are not directly subordinate to either the LPR or DPR leadership, whom many regard as corrupt. Instead, they have their own command structure that they have imported from back home. Here’s quote from the profile of one of the Cossack warlords in East Ukraine by AP journalist Natalia Vasilieva:

Wooden ammunition crates are stacked up in front of the windows of Kozitsyn’s sparse office. Behind him hang portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Kremlin chief of staff Vladislav Surkov — renowned for being the eminence grise of the Moscow leadership. Outside, four parked tanks carry Russian and rebel flags. Burly Cossacks with wind-burned faces wearing black-and-red astrakhan hats fix Ukrainian military hardware seized in fighting. In the lobby of the House of Culture, an elderly female barber shaves and gives haircuts to a line of Cossacks — members of a semi-military group which traditionally guarded the far-flung outposts of the Russian empire — waiting to pay court to a commander they affectionately call Batya, or Daddy.

As mercenaries, regular armed forces and local pro-Russian separatists all seek to establish control over some part of the territories of the DPR and LPR, alternately known as part of Novorossiya, there are real concerns about who will be able to assert control over all, if not most, of the forces in the future.

While nothing has been determined about the downing of the MH17 flight, it was originally rumored to be the result of a group of Cossacks armed with a Buk anti-air missile system that fired on the plane. It is just one example of what the Russian-backed separatists and the Kremlin itself would like to avoid as they seek to draw international attention away from direct Russian involvement in the conflict.