Cossacks

A painting showing some Ukrainian Cossacks. Painted by Ilya Repin from 1880 to 1891.

The Cossacks (Ukrainian: Козаки) (from Cuman cosac, meaning "free man") were a group of nomadic East Slavic Orthodox Christian warriors originating in the steppes of Ukraine. They are famous for their sense of being free. They are also well known for their military prowess and martial might, chiefly as cavalry mounted swordsmen and horse-archers.

The Ukrainian Cossacks first rose as a warrior group of East Slavic Orthodox Christian horsemen who took up a military tradition and eventually created a Cossack federation in the steppes of Ukraine. They first rose up in the 15th century in response to the raids of the Tatars and the conquests of the Ottoman Empire.

During the Ottoman occupation of the western bank of Ukraine, the Cossacks rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and were responsible for destroying Ottoman influence in the region. The Ottomans also lost control over Ukraine and parts of Romania because of the Cossack resistance in the form of fast-attack raiding. The Cossacks captured many Ottoman outposts in the Ukrainian steppes and created a Cossack Hetmanate (State). They sometimes served the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth forces and later fought against them, ultimately seizing lands in modern-day Ukraine. Thus, the Cossacks are considered to be the founders of modern Ukraine by most Ukrainians themselves, since they expelled the Ottomans and Polish from Ukraine and created an independent state for themselves.

The name Cossack itself literally means "free man". The term was first used in the year 1395. The most well-known Cossacks are the Ukrainian Cossacks from Zaporizhzhia and the Russian Cossacks (Kazaks) from the Don, Terek, Kuban and Ural areas. They came about shortly after the Mongol sacking of Kievan Rus, modern-day Kyïv. Eventually, the Russian Cossacks guarded land for the Russian Empire.

Cossacks were in the Russian Army in some wars throughout the 1800s and the 1900s. They were mostly responsible for conquering land in Central Asia and the Caucasus for the Russian Empire. On behalf of the Russian Imperial state, they conquered lands as far east as Siberia and even Alaska, which they attacked and subdued. Alaska was later sold to the United States, but the lands that they conquered in the Russian Far East such as Siberia are still part of Russia today, which contributed in making the modern Russian nation-state the largest country in the world by land area.

They captured a number of locales in the Caucasus, such as those of the rebellious states of Chechnya and Dagestan. They were also responsible for destroying many Turkic states in both the Caucasus and Central Asia by their conquests for the Russian Empire. They fiercely eliminated any resistance to the Russian Crown in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and were responsible for adding these nations and their peoples into the growing amalgam that was the Russian Empire. They also invaded Armenia due of calls of support by the native Armenians against the Ottoman Empire. This, in turn, would not only cause the Cossacks to attack Azerbaijan and annex both states into the Russian Empire, but would also lead to crushing defeats against the Ottomans on numerous occasions in northeastern Turkey.

During the Russian Civil War, most Cossacks fought against the Red Army, but a few, who were known as the, 'Red Cossacks', fought for the Bolsheviks. During the totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union, the Cossack peoples were subjected to many Bolshevik attacks, and the Cossack lands survived several famines. Cossack armies fought upon both sides during the Second World War, primarily, if not exclusively, upon the bloody Eastern front of WW2

Nowadays, in both Ukraine and in Russia, Cossacks are a complicated and divisive topic, with many both in and outside of these nations claiming the Cossack peoples, and their heritage, sometimes as their own heritage, but much of the time also utilize them as an example for contemporary actions. This aforementioned divisiveness has only increased since the commencement of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022 by Vladimir Putin, and the Cossack identity and iconography has and is actively being used by both sides to fuel support for their respective causes.