The Russian Cossacks actively support and participate in the operation in Ukraine. At the same time, the state is removed from a full-fledged dialogue with it, says Cossack colonel, member of the Supreme Council of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad Nikolai Kolzhanov
According to the All-Russian Cossack Society, there are 170,000 registered Cossacks in Russia. Their main task is to help organize public order and cultural and patriotic education. Cossacks are also participating in the current conflict in Ukraine - up to 10 Cossack units numbering over 4 thousand people are fighting on the side of the union republics of Donbass. However, the Cossacks traditionally want more - the revival of the whole estate, says Nikolai Kolzhanov - the captain of the Soviet army, a Cossack colonel, a member of the board and a member of the Supreme Council of the Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad.
Nikolai Kolzhanov joined the Cossacks in 1992. Interaction with the Cossacks began when he became the head of the administration of the village of Glubokiy, Kamensky district. Later he began to serve in its ranks. In 2005, the plenipotentiary representative of the President of Russia in the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak awarded him the rank of colonel of the All-Russian Cossacks.
Against the backdrop of a military special operation in Ukraine, Nikolai Kolzhanov told Expert Yug about the role the Cossacks play today in the ongoing events and about their relationship with the state.
The Cossacks today are many public organizations
- What is the Cossacks on the Don today?
- Today, more than 4 thousand people are in public Cossack organizations and about the same number are in the register, although there are much more Cossacks on the Don. Previously, there were about 50 such organizations in Moscow, and all of them were called almost the same - "Union of the Don Cossacks."
Many of their participants are former officers and generals of the Soviet army. Some of them did not previously burn with love for the Cossacks, and today they are in its ranks. But they will never go to the Donbass, because they believe that they have already won back theirs. Sometimes they do something useful and good. But this does not negate the main problem - today the Cossacks are a heterogeneous phenomenon.
- It turns out that today the Cossacks do not have any common and unified structure?
- There is the "All-Russian Cossack Society", which is headed by Nikolai Alexandrovich Doluda (State Duma deputy and former deputy governor of the region). In theory, all Cossack societies should be under his auspices. But inside them there are, to put it mildly, dubious elements that received high Cossack ranks in a not entirely honest way. The Cossacks are now so complicated. It has many problems. It has won a lot of awards. And the awards, in my opinion, spoil the Cossacks.
I know what I'm talking about, because in the service I was the ataman of the Glubokinsky Cossack yurt for 23 years. Then he was elected Ataman of the Donetsk District for two terms - for 9 years. In 2015, in Belaya Kalitva, I resigned and retired. I was an ataman of varying degrees - a yurt, and then a district, which includes nine cities.
Was Donbass part of the district you commanded?
- Donetsk and Luhansk were in another state, and because of this, huge difficulties arose. In fact, I did not command them for a day. Delegations of chieftains came to us from there, but they had their own "wedding", and we have our own. The Ukrainian Cossacks suffer from the same problems as ours. There, too, there are enough hetmans who undeservedly put on orders. Today, the bad thing about the Cossacks is that it is so diverse that they do not all come to us. When he left the post of ataman of the All-Great Don Army, Vodolatsky Viktor Petrovich, being a State Duma deputy, created the "Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad". He put forward my candidacy for the post of chairman of the Council of the Elders of this Union. And since then, since 2015, I have been leading it.
Nikolai Kolzhanov and Vodolatsky
