Cossacks in east Ukraine fight government — and other rebels - Yahoo News
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But the enemy the Cossacks fear most is the enemy within — the separatist leaders of the self-declared Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) who they refuse to obey.
“We’re under the orders of our Russian brothers of the Great Army of the Don Cossacks. We don’t recognise the authority of the LNR,” said the soldier.
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Igor Plotnitsky, head of the Lugansk rebels battling the Kiev government, set an April 4 deadline for the Cossacks to either join the LNR’s military wing, hand over their weapons — or be outlawed.
The deadline was no idle threat. Faced by blatant Cossack disobedience, the Lugansk rebels have hit back hard against the militiamen in recent weeks.
On March 30, Cossacks were attacked and disarmed in the neighbouring town of Petrovsk in an operation in which several people died. A month earlier a leading local Cossack Ataman, or leader, was arrested nearby in a deadly raid.
In January the Cossack mayor of Pervomaisk, Yevgeny Ischenko, was shot dead by unknown gunman while a local warlord allied to another group of Cossacks, Alexander Bednov, known by his nickname “Batman”, died along with six bodyguards when his armoured car was hit by an anti-tank missile in an ambush.
“LNR special services liquidated the head of a criminal group,” the Lugansk authorities said at the time.