Russia’s Use of Cossack Heritage in Ukraine’s Occupied Territories
The Kremlin is using every means possible to consolidate its power in the occupied Ukrainian territories. In this context it is denying Ukraine its own Cossack memory and instrumentalising it for its own ends.
To legitimise its rule in the occupied territories of Ukraine, Russia is attempting to appropriate the local culture and ideology. The region’s Cossack heritage, which is of national historical significance to Ukraine, is a particular focus of these efforts.
Scholars believe that the Cossacks were originally runaway slaves from the Crimean Khanate (1441–1783) who sold martial services to the tsar, the sultan, and the Polish king. Ukrainians and Russians both lay claim to them as an important part of national heritage. The Cossack Hetmanate (1648–1764), an autonomous proto-state in central Ukraine, laid the foundations for modern Ukrainian statehood. In his 2012 book The Cossack Myth, historian Serhii Plokhii describes how nineteenth-century narratives of Ukrainian nationalism idolised Cossack hetmen (heads of state), such as Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Ivan Mazepa.
The Cossacks remain central to Ukrainian nationalism and have long been associated with the Ukrainian armed forces. Indeed, the sacred Cossack day of Pokrova doubles as the Day of Defenders of Ukraine on 1 October. Today, many Ukrainian soldiers consider themselves Cossacks, and some cultivate this image by acquiring the distinctive Cossack haircut known as a chub or osoledits. It is this legacy that Russia seeks to appropriate.
Cossacks in Russia – and Ukraine?
Russia has its own Cossack heritage. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Imperial Russia dragooned Cossacks into service to expand the empire. At the end of the Soviet Union, descendants of the 11 imperial Voiskas (hosts or organised communities of Cossacks) gathered in Moscow to declare the ‘rebirth of the Cossacks’.
The process of co-opting the Cossack movement began in 1995, when the Russian government created a register for Cossacks, and has accelerated under President Vladimir Putin. In 2010, the Russian Orthodox Church created a Synodal Committee for Connections with Cossacks. And on 4 November 2018 – Russia Day – the All-Russian Cossack Society was founded to unite the disparate Voiskas under one umbrella and support the creation of new ones.
Russian political forces dispute the authenticity of Ukraine’s claims to have its own Cossacks and insist that only theirs are true. Since 2014, there have been concerted efforts to establish Voiskas across the occupied territories – the first being the Black Sea Cossack Voiska, founded shortly after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Measures to create Cossack societies have also been bearing fruit.
Since March 2025 in the occupied parts of Kherson, a working group for the development of the Cossacks has tried to ‘revive Cossack traditions’. Likewise, in the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia, a special working group for Cossack affairs announced the creation in 2025 of a Cossack region. Like their fellow organisations in Russia, these working groups have been erecting or restoring Cossack monuments, such as a Cossack cross in the Dnipro region, distributing humanitarian aid for emergencies, and having Cossack heroes come to engage with impressionable youth organisations. The Federal Agency for Nationalities Affairs in the occupied territories has reportedly become ‘practically a Cossack organisation’.
It is perhaps in education that such efforts have been most pronounced, with Cossack influence spreading throughout the system. All regional administrations in the occupied territories offer Cossack classes in regular schools and even dedicated Cossack schools and nurseries. Cossack groups in Luhansk have been awarded grants to promote Cossack culture. Most significantly, the regime is opening a series of Cossack Cadet Corps (whose Russian abbreviation, KKK, is deliberately provocative) in the occupied territories. In addition, the recently established League of Cossack Universities has two branches in Donetsk, one in Zaporizhzhia, and one in Kherson.
An ever-expanding movement
Russia’s instrumentalisation of the Cossack legacy is one of the emergent stories from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and preceded even its 2014 annexation of parts of the country’s east. The movement continues to expand, both inside and outside Russia proper. In the occupied territories, the Russians are using propaganda both to legitimate their rule and to recruit local inhabitants to fight – an all-too-common event during war. Yet the longer this brutal war continues, the harder such social engineering becomes to eradicate, laying the ground for a future conflict.
Richard Arnold is professor of political science at Muskingum University.