Free Republic

Renowned for their sword-fighting prowess and notorious for their anti-Semitism in czarist Russia, the Cossacks are taking on new foes: beggars, drunks and improperly parked cars. With the approval of city authorities, eight Cossacks clad in traditional fur hats and uniforms patrolled a Moscow train station on Tuesday looking for signs of minor public disturbances. The Kremlin is seeking to use the once-feared paramilitary squads in its new drive to promote conservative values and appeal to nationalists. The southern Krasnodar province — which includes Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics — launched Cossack patrols in September to crack...

KRASNODAR, Russia -- Thousands of Muslims from a small ethnic group known as the Meskhetian Turks are fleeing this Black Sea region for the United States. The exodus is caused by what human rights groups call a campaign of persecution sanctioned by local authorities and spearheaded by the Cossacks, a Russian militia that fought for the czars and is being revived. In the past year, just more than 5,000 Meskhetian Turks have resettled in the United States as refugees, and 4,400 have approval to immigrate, according to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Another 7,000 have filed applications that U.S. officials...

VESHENSKAYA, Rostov Region, May 25 (RIA Novosti) - Cossacks asked President Putin on Wednesday to help return Russians to North Caucasian republics. They met with Vladimir Putin in the Veshenskaya Cossack village, where the president arrived at to mark the 100th anniversary since the famous writer and Nobel prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov was born. Chieftain of the Tersky military unit Vasily Bondarev said that the Russian population had reduced from 23% to 3.7% in Chechnya and from 23% to 1.2% in Ingushetia (a republic bordering on Chechnya) in recent decades. "The exodus of Russians from Chechnya and Ingushetia has reached...

MOSCOW, April 13 (RIA Novosti) - Vladimir Putin submitted a draft law On State Service of the Russian Cossacks for consideration by the State Duma. According to the presidential spokesman, the head of state sent a relevant letter to Boris Gryzlov, chairman of the lower house of the parliament. The draft law spells out the legal and organizational fundamentals for involving the Russian Cossacks in state service based on the current practice of regulating the issue by other Russian law-making instruments. The draft law does not regulate any other activities of the Cossacks, unrelated to state service. The law covers...

A Cossack slicing off the top of a small tree from the back of a horse during a four-day festival in Novocherkassk. Equestrian games were one of the highlights of the festival. A Cossack rider jumping over a human hurdle NOVOCHERKASSK, Southern Russia -- An invading French regiment is routed by a Cossack cavalry unit amid deafening cannon fire near the Tuzlovka River, a few kilometers outside Novocherkassk, the historic capital of the Don Cossacks. After the lopsided battle, combatants from both sides sit down to drink vodka together while cannon smoke still lingers over the steppe. But this...