I quoted:
The President has introduced personally to the Russian Duma a Bill that would create special Cossack security units to preserve law and order and fight terrorism.
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This probably doesn't interest people besides M. Pollack, with whom I've been having a long exchange about this offlist, so after this I'm outta here!
Unless something has changed drastically or I've missed something, this article is overwrought. The proposed Cossie detachments are mainly supposed to deal with things like forest-fighting and disaster containment, according to what I've been reading in the Russian press. There are already Cossack detachments in the army the details of which I do not know.
The Cossies have been pushing for this for years -- they must be happy as hell.
Actually this is a victory for the "state-service" "asphaly Cossack" wing of the Cossack leadership, as opposed to those who think Cossacks should hang out on their territory and have as much independence from the state as possible (this tension in kazachestvo goes back centuries, by the way -- between those that view themselves as servants of the state and those that view the state as an enemy -- probably due to their historic status as a group that received great freedoms BECAUSE they agreed to perform state service in exchange. Indeed from what I have been reading some White Cossacks considered the Civil War to really be a war between the Great Russians and the Cossacks, conceived of as two different Slavic tribes.).
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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