Cossacks riding Russia’s patriotic wave - BBC News

The Cossacks were Russian military horsemen who saw themselves as Orthodox Christian warriors, in voluntary service to the tsar. Repressed after the Bolshevik Revolution, since the collapse of the Soviet Union they have re-emerged and are trying to revive Cossack traditions. Ilya Okhotnikov served in Russia’s special forces and comes from a long line of Cossacks. When he retired he moved out of the city and started building a traditional Cossack settlement where he is trying to continue the Cossack way of l