Cossacks forming armed groups in Belarus
- 26.01.2010, 9:56
A Cossack embassy of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan will open in Minsk within the frames of the Customs Union.
The so called supreme ataman (commander) of the Belarusian Cossack Association Nikolai Yerkovich told this in an interview to the newspaper “Vecherni Minsk”. Members of the embassy even had a meeting with Uladzimir Makei, the head of the President’s Administration, and discussed all related issues.
An interesting detail: “It was informed at a sitting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) that Cossack subdivisions would be created in the CSTO member states. The Cossacks are supposed to be called up for military drills. This will create an opportunity to have a reserve military group able to defend the states if necessary...”
Nikolai Yerkovich said that patriotic centers and classes had been working in schools and specialised secondary schools in Belarus since 1998. “It’s like an after-school club. Children have lessons in hand-to-hand fight, marching, skill at arms... We have 160 cadets, children from 6 to 18 years, in Cossack military patriotic centers.”
The Cossacks are also going to take part in border control. They also would like to work in public service sector, fulfil task within the frameworks of “governmental programmes”, create own units as parts of interior troops to wear chevrons of the Belarusian Cossacks Association and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The Cossacks appeal to history to justify their existence. “July 22, 1654 is considered the birthday of the Belarusian Cossacks. Orthodox nobleman Kanstantsin Paklonski and his friends (four noblemen and four bourgeois gentlemen) arrived to Tsar. They met warm reception of Tsar Alexei, who granted them 40 sables and 50 rubles. The Tsar also promoted Paklonski to colonel and permitted him to form a regiment of ‘noblemen and other people’... The first Belarusian Cossack regiment of Chavusy was created on the order of the Tsar,” “ataman” Yerkovich said.
As famous Belarusian journalist Svyatlana Kalinkina writes in her blog, Nikolai Yerkovich is a Cossack Lieutenant General. It seems that he is going to head the “illegal armed band”. However, when working for the Defense Ministry, he occupied a much lower position.
“This is probably the special pleasure of Cossacks. It is a game for adult boys. On the one hand, it’s a joke, but everything is serious on the other hand. They proclaim themselves generals and heroes. Yerkevich, for example, has a gold star medal of hero given by the Ukrainian Cossacks organization.
I am not kidding about the armed bands. We all thought it’s a kind of joke to wear Cossack uniform, but it appeared to be very serious. They are armed only with whips now, but they are struggling for more,” the journalist notes in her blog.
“In general, we all though disguised actors appear at religious holidays, but they are ready to carry weapons. ‘Good?’ they ask one another. ‘Good!’ the answer and go to patrol Belarusian towns,” Svyatlana Kalinkina writes.
“Why are centers of military training for Muslims not opened in Belarus? They were invited for military service by Great Duke Vytautas. It happened far earlier – in the late 14th century. On the whole, I’ve read the interview and I don’t find it funny. Bearing in mind that it was the Belarusian Cossacks who began to award high officials with Stalin Order, it is not funny at all,” the journalist concludes.