The Zaporizhzhian Cossacks held out until Catherine the Great, one of the Russian empire's most formidable leaders, disbanded them in 1775. But today, Kopishinskyi says, the Russians are weak.

Retired FSB General Ivan Mironov, a KGB veteran from the 1970s, commands the pseudo-Cossack unit whose members were filmed beating anti-Putin protesters in Moscow on May 5. Although Mironov has ...

Cossack family life is a rigid, hierarchical system in which the eldest man's word is law. Unashamedly, the Ataman explained that Cossack families should be as large as possible. He introduced me to ...