![]() When President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused the US offer to rescue him at the start of the war, he exemplified Cossack spirit. Vladimir Putin has focused his assault on the same lands today, nearly 250 years later.īut Putin did not reckon with the Cossack spirit. Catherine went on to conquer Tatar Crimea and to found Odesa, calling her Ukrainian possessions Novorussia. The Russian empress Catherine II ordered the destruction of the Sich in 1775, ending the Cossack Hetmanate or proto-state and consolidating Russia’s domination over Ukraine. ![]() Helmeted soldiers stand at sandbagged checkpoints on the highway bridges which cross it. ![]() Today, Khortytsia, the wooded island in the Dnipro where the Cossack Sich stood, is a Ukrainian military base, surrounded by a minefield. They watched horsemen in Cossack costume and listened to tour guides recounting the legends of the warrior caste whom Ukrainians consider to be their founding fathers. Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, tourists from around the world visited a reconstruction of the Sich, the fortress capital built by Zaporizhzhian Cossacks in the 16th century.
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