Kremlin Continues to Promote Cossack Rebirth in 2025

Executive Summary:

• The Kremlin is increasingly using the Cossack identity to justify its war in Ukraine, portraying them as liberators of Russian land. The Cossack’s use of Orthodox symbolism and historical narratives reinforce their role in neo-imperial mythmaking.
• The All-Russian Cossack Society highlights Cossack military contributions in Ukraine, emphasizing religious ceremonies, battle banners, and Russian Orthodox Church blessings to mythologize their role, further integrating the Cossack identity into Russia’s “holy war.”
• The revival of Cossack identity is gaining institutional backing, with Moscow set to open a Cossack museum in 2025, further solidifying their role in state propaganda and potentially uniting different Cossack factions under Kremlin control.

The Cossacks are set to feature prominently in Kremlin propaganda for its war in Ukraine in 2025. On January 7, Orthodox Christmas Day, the Cossacks erected a Cossack worship cross in the occupied Donetsk oblast. Ataman of the all-Russian Cossack Society Vitaly Kuznetsov remarked that the cross was a symbol of their “faith and victory” in a place where Cossack units are “liberating Russian territory and the civilians of Donbas” (VsKO, January 14). At the cross ceremony, there was a reminder that last December, a Cossack worship cross was erected in Zaporizhzhia “in memory of the Cossacks who shed blood and gave their lives liberating the historical ancestral Cossack lands” (VsKO, January 14). The ceremony emphasizes the fundamental role of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Cossack culture, creating a sense of mysticism around the accomplishments of Cossack units and their valor in the war in Ukraine. This description of the occupied territories also constructs the Cossacks as indigenes linked metaphysically to this region. The “rebirth of the Cossacks” seems to be emerging as a prominent narrative legitimizing the war, focusing on the ancient Cossack homeland of Zaporizhzhia and the close relationship Cossacks have to the ROC (see EDM, November 27, 2024).

The first three news articles of 2025 on the All-Russian Cossack Society (Vserossiskoe Kazach’e Obshchestva, Всероссийское казачье общество) website were related to the situation in Zaporizhzhia. The region is the birthplace of the Cossack ideal and the locus of the Zaporizhzhian Sich (palisade, Січ) in Nikolai Gogol’s novel Taras Bulba about a Zaporizhzhian Cossack and his sons. Zaporizhzhia lies at the heart of efforts to control the Cossack movement and is a potent source of mythmaking (see EDM, October 9, November 19, 2024).

The first article on the website focuses on the January 6 (Orthodox Christmas Eve) award of a consecrated battle banner to the BARS-15 “Ermak” battalion. Ermak, a battalion manned mainly by warriors from the Volga Cossack host, had consecrated the banner in summer 2024, but the banner was handed over at the point of contact in the Donetsk National Republic. In the ceremony, Kuznetsov was accompanied by the first deputy Ataman Mikhail Zorin, Chairman of the Union of Cossack Youth Igor Kochubeev, and Kuznetsov’s advisor, Zaporizhzhia regional legislator Aleksei Yasinskii. The Ataman stated, “This banner of this glorious unit will henceforth be a shrine and a symbol of the military glory, valor, and honor of the Cossacks” (VsKO, January 10). The ceremony provides ample material for myth-making and inspirational stories to fortify the spirits of Russia’s neo-imperial mission.

The second article concerned a meeting later on Orthodox Christmas Eve, in which Kuznetsov met with Orthodox Bishop Theodore of Berdyansk and Primorye. The meeting discussed “the spiritual nourishment” of the Cossack societies being created in the Zaporizhzhia oblast and the Cossack volunteer units operating there (VsKO, January 10). Further contributing to the pretense that the Cossacks are fighting on behalf of their faith, Kuznetsov told the Bishop about two worship crosses in Zaporizhzhia installed by the Cossacks as well as the transfer of field churches with belfries to the Cossack volunteers. Cossack social formations are colonizing the native culture of the region, assigning new meanings to existing institutions. This further instills the Cossack image in the mythology surrounding the ROC.

The role of the ROC in Cossack culture is further highlighted in the third article, which focuses on the Cossacks giving “melodious bells for the belfry” to a church in Zaporizhzhia. Kuznetsov, Zorin, Kochubeev, Yasinskii, and Maxim Bug, the ataman of the newly created North-Western Cossack host, were all in attendance. They announced that they donated bells “on behalf of the heroic fighters of the Zaporizhzhia Cossack detachment named after Pavel Anatolyevich Sudoplatov (BARS-32)” to the church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God in the village of Podgornye, Vasilyevsky Region, Zaporizhzhia oblast (VsKO, January 10). Instances such as these make it seem as if the Cossacks are occupying a more central role in the Kremlin’s ongoing narrative for the war.

Inside Russia, the new prominence of the Cossack image is evident, suggesting the regime is supporting the “rebirth of the Cossacks.” The new central museum of the Russian Cossacks is set to open in Moscow in the first half of 2025. The museum will be in a restored historical building and will feature both ancient relics and modern exhibits. This includes a special room devoted to the participation of the Cossacks in Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as copies of all modern banners of the 13 Cossack voiskas (войска) throughout Russia. The inclusion of these banners historicizes the presence of Cossack formations even in regions lacking an authentically Cossack past. Kuznetsov opined that the museum would help “young people understand that Cossacks are the backbone of the Russian state” (Kazachestvo.ru, December 9, 2024). More significantly, the ceremony promoting the museum’s opening was attended both by Kuznetsov of the registered Russian Cossacks and the supreme ataman of the all-Russian public organization “the Union of Cossacks,” Pavel Zadorozhny, who called the museum a “spiritual center” (Kazachestvo.ru, December 9, 2024). Zadorozhny’s presence at the ceremony implies the Kremlin’s attempt to unite the registered Cossacks with the more numerous public Cossack organizations is bearing fruit.

The ROC’s central role in the Cossack movement aligns with its role in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The ROC has recognized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war,” which can clearly be seen in the Cossacks’ relationship to their role in the war and the imagery they promote with their participation (see EDM, January 30, 2023, April 10, 2024). The ROC is a unifying force between the Cossacks as a whole, creating a common power to fight for. A reunified and single-minded Cossack force making advances in Ukraine may be a new reality with numerous implications for the fate of the war and the wider world.