Almost thirty years have passed since the spring of 1992, the Kuban volunteer Cossacks went to the aid of their Slavic brothers in Transnistria, where armed confrontation began on the fragments of the disintegrated USSR. Already on March 12, the first hundred Kuban Cossacks, led by the marching chieftain Colonel Alexei Anikin, took part in the battles.
The Kuban Cossacks are connected with Transnistria by real blood ties. It was there that the Black Sea army of the faithful Cossacks was created and almost a decade from the former Cossacks, which later became the basis of the Kuban Cossack army.
In total, about 200 Kuban volunteer Cossacks fought in Transnistria in 1992. Some of them gave their lives for the freedom of the Transnistrian republic. The first, literally on the second day of hostilities, was hit by a bullet Nikolai Petin. And on March 31, journalist and writer Alexander Berlizov died. According to the memoirs of a fellow soldier, on the eve of his last battle, he was extremely excited as if he foresaw the approaching death. But he was not afraid of her, but was preparing to accept him as a real Cossack - with weapons in his hands. In the morning during the battle near the village of Koshnitsy, he was mortally wounded by a shot in the back. Having fallen to the ground, having managed to say: “That's all ...”. A year later, a monument appeared on the grave with the words: “He was a Cossack and fell in battle. For us, for our homeland! ” Behind these words is the whole fate of a historian, a gifted publicist, an honest uncompromising journalist. The whole life of Alexander Berlizov is a feat. It only ended in Transnistria. But his real scientific, civil feat was already shown when he refused in his Ph.D. Alexander was denied protection
dissertations. He did not become a candidate of historical sciences. He became a real hero.
In the battles for the liberation of the city of Bender - the capital of Transnistria - the Cossacks Valery Tatarenko, Alexei Antonov and Sergey Denisov piled their heads - they are buried in their native villages.
Recalling the fighting days of Transnistria, Colonel Anikin names the volunteers who did not flinch, were not afraid of the first baptism of fire. Some of them not only kept the line for 20 days (Cossack brigades changed each other after this period), but also remained longer. Alexander Peshkov - the commander of the first platoon, Alexander Vyatkin, Nikolai Dubrov, the chieftain of the Transnistrian Cossacks Alexander Kucher ...
- In those distant 90s, we were full of the energy of a resurgent Russia, the Cossacks. We defended not only Transnistria, defended a united Russia. We were driven by a desire to save the Power. We gained a new sense of the motherland and the combat experience that was useful to the Cossacks in the Crimea in 2014.
The younger generation Alexei Alexandrovich wants - to know the price of life:
- A Cossack is always ready to give his life in the name of the Motherland. But above this is to survive and protect loved ones. A real Cossack must cultivate the ability to control his feelings and actions ... Then he can defeat the enemy.
After the Transnistrian events, the Cossacks supported the Abkhaz in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992-1993. They explain this high civil impulse by the need to protect the common cultural and Orthodox traditions of the Russian and Abkhaz peoples, the common ethnic roots of the Abkhaz and Circassians, with whom the Cossacks developed friendly relations.