Cossacks

Donbass covered by the fire of the war resembles an alchemical retort in which substances unknown to science melt. The hellish brew just threatened to explode "Novorossia" - but suddenly it broke into two gray halves, the DPR and the LPR. However, the process did not end there: before our eyes, the contours of the new political project appear through the shells of the People’s Republics. We are talking about the "Cossack National Guard" of Nikolai Kozitsyn, who had already taken control of most of the territory of the LPR and periodically conflict with the leaders of the separatist movement.

The Novocherkassk Cossacks invaded the territory of Ukraine in early May, essentially "squeezing" the south of the Luhansk region from local separatists engaged in preparation for the referendum on the creation of the LPR. Anthracite made his capital Kozitsyn. Residents of this mining city, who until recently, the leaders of the Lugansk separatists spoke about the "Russian spring", was waiting for a surprise from the new government in the person of the Cossack chieftain: it was announced that all this time they lived in the territory of the "village of Anthracita" and, accordingly, are hereditary Don Cossacks.

Nikolai Kozitsyn gives an interview to Vice News journalist Simon Ostrovsky

Gradually, the Cossacks took control of the strategically important line of Sverdlovsk - Rovenka - Anthracite - Red Luch - Debaltseve, extracting considerable dividends from the full -flowing traffic of volunteers, weapons and humanitarian aid from the territory of Russia to Gorlovka and Donetsk through the Dolzhansky checkpoint. Kozitsyn managed to stay in the shadow of events in the LPR and the DPR for a long time. His chubby fighters in Kubanka seized the city outside the city "in the rear" from the warring Lugansk and Donetsk separatists and established their own orders there. Neither Ukrainian nor Russian journalists paid enough attention to this process. And in vain: on the conscience of the Cossacks of Kozitsyn, the abduction of people, including OSCE employees, robberies, extortion.

However, who will you surprise this in the Donbass now?

Kozitsyn "became famous" only in July, when the militants shot down the Malaysian "Boeing" over Torez. "Neh .. fly, now the war is on!" - So the chieftain reacted to the news about the destroyed civilian aircraft in a telephone conversation intercepted by the SBU. Specific details of the actions of the Cossacks in the captured territories began to emerge: public flogging, "people's courts" with executions, mass export of coal from non -working mines to Russian territory and gross accelerations of spontaneous riots.

This gave rise to the leaders of the LPR, whose influence in the Luhansk region was reduced every day, several times "raise a question" in Moscow about Kozitsyn. At one time, the “head of the LPR” Valery Bolotov even publicly accused the chieftain of conspiracy with the Ukrainian authorities - they say, the Cossacks are going to “hit in the back” to pass Lugansk Kyiv.

The Kremlin several times “grinned” the leadership of the LPR and the DPR, withdrew to Russia even Girkina-Strelkov, but the half-senior Kozitsyn continued the expansion-the Stakhanov’s native to Kubankov also controlled people in Kuzitsyn “Ataman” Pavel Dremov), and the Slavyanuserbsk located near Lugansk Slavyanuserbsk. The leadership of the LPR represented by the head of the unrecognized Republic of Plotnitsky continues to make statements that "there will be no Cossack republics in the territory of the Luhansk region."

Behind Kozitsyn’s chair in his office in anthracite, two portraits hang. On the right is Vladimir Putin, and on the left is the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, the ideologist of "controlled democracy" Vladislav Surkov

However, the advantage is not on the side of Lugansk, despite informal protection from the Kremlin. By the end of November, the LPR was controlled only by the regional center, Krasnodon, Lutugino - and with a very big stretch Alchevsk and Perevalsk, where Alexei Mozgova commands. The rest of the territory of the Luhansk region not subject to the Ukrainian authorities, with the exception of several autonomous "islands", is actually "Kazakia". This is almost 80% of the "LPR"!

Nikolai Kozitsyn, a former overseer-convoir of the Novocherkassk colony of maximum security colony-has been considered an active participant in the revival of the Don Cossacks since the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, he fought in Transnistria and in Abkhazia, in 1993 he was elected 4th ataman of the revived Don army.

The ideologists of the post -Soviet Cossack movement immediately began to defend their national identity: “Cossacks are one of the Eastern Slavic peoples who have their own physical and spiritual appearance. Cossacks are distinguished by collegiality, courage, developed mutual assistance. We have no doubt that the Cossack is a nationality,” said “Heir to Kozitsyn, Vladimir Vodolatsky at the congress Don Cossacks of the Vserekiy Don Army.

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Actually, Kozitsyn was a representative of the most radical wing of the Cossack movement, which defended the formation of the Don Cossack Republic from Volgograd to Lugansk and Donetsk. On his initiative, in 1994, the "Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between the All -Great Army of the Don and Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" was signed. The contract also had a clause on the failure to pass through the territory of the troops of Russian military equipment in Chechnya during the first Chechen war. In military conditions, this position of the chieftain caused a split in motion. Moscow did everything possible to prevent the Cossacks from getting carried away with "independence" and in 1996 Kozitsyn was shifted from the post of chieftain. The Don Cossacks were supervised and bureaucratic.

Johar Dudaev and Nikolai Kozitsyn, 1994

But Kozitsyn did not want to go to rest. He became an informal leader of the "non -systemic" Cossack organizations, subsequently supported the "movement in support of the army" of Leo Rokhlin (according to rumors, killed by the special services for trying to organize an anteltsian military coup) and even the Communist Party. After the coming to power, Vladimir Putin Kozitsyn sat almost freely in Novocherkassk-right up to the beginning of the undeclared Ukrainian-Russian war in the Donbass.

Behind Kozitsyn’s chair in his office in anthracite, two portraits hang. On the right is Vladimir Putin, and on the left is the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, the ideologist of "controlled democracy" Vladislav Surkov. The support of Surkov, a specialist in radical political movements, can also explain the successes of Kozitsyn in the creation of the "Cossack Republic", which actually parasitizes on the projects of Surkov’s competitors to master the Kremlin budgets, Novorossiya and LPR/DPR.

A year ago, Surkov, flirting with Russian liberals, was removed by the Kremlin from large -scale political projects. It is possible that now he is trying to strengthen his influence, playing a Cossack map in eastern Ukraine. Another thing is also possible: the Kremlin intrigues can play the ideologists of the Don Cossacks into the hands, and the adventure of Kozitsyn will help in the construction of the Cossack Republic within the boundaries of the Donskoy army. In 1913, it included units of the current Volgograd, Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

Andrey Dikhtyarenko - Lugansk journalist, editor -in -chief of the Real Gazeta