For the sake of sabers and villages

Don Ataman established the Chechen Cossack district

The head of the international union of public associations “The Great Don Army” Nikolai Kozitsyn issued a decree on the formation of the Chechen Cossack district as part of his organization. And he even appointed an ataman there - Chechen businessman Ruslan Dunaev. At the same time, Mr. Kozitsyn is not at all embarrassed by the fact that no Chechen Cossacks have ever existed in history, and the Terek Cossacks who lived in the republic before the presidency of Dzhokhar Dudayev angrily condemned the initiative of the Don “Judas.”

In the mid-90s of the last century, the Don Cossacks split into two troops: the official registered and the free. The registered Cossacks are today headed by the Deputy Governor of the Rostov Region, Viktor Vodolatsky. And the free Cossacks are led, probably, by the most odious Don ataman, Nikolai Kozitsyn. Both military commanders claim that more than 150 thousand Cossacks were gathered under their banners. However, there is no documentary evidence of this.

At the same time, both chieftains strive in every possible way to expand the boundaries of their influence. For example, Viktor Vodolatsky this year brought the Kalmyks back into the fold of his army (the Vremya Novostey newspaper wrote about this initiative), which nominally added 70 villages and 30 thousand sabers to him. But the Kalmyks, unlike the Chechens, joined the Cossacks 350 years ago, many times together with the Don people they went against the enemy and even enriched the Russian army with the cry of “hurray.” With the Chechens, as you know, the story is completely different. Moreover, negativity has been accumulating in the very recent past. For example, under Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Terek Cossacks actually had to leave the territory of the republic, migrating en masse to the Stavropol region.

However, even during the reign of Dudayev, when the Cossacks survived from Chechnya, Nikolai Kozitsyn managed to sign a peace treaty with Ichkeria. The Terek Cossacks now remembered this to the Don Ataman, writing an open angry letter in which they called Kozitsyn a Judas. And they are outraged, among other things, by the fact that he awarded the newly-minted Chechen chieftain the rank of colonel. Meanwhile, Ataman Kozitsyn hopes to involve new Caucasian republics in his movement.

Larisa NIKITINA, Rostov-on-Don