From School to Battlefield to Grave: How Russian Cossacks drive young people to war

Your browser does not support the video tag. From School to Battlefield to Grave How Russian Cossacks drive young people to war This video was posted in April 2024 by Беркут , a student association within a Russian Federal University. Students, about to leave for an Airsoft competition , stand in military formation outside a campus building .

This is Олег Монин who took Berkut’s oath four months earlier . Through this veiled Cossack Youth Organisation, he trained in combat tactics with returned fighters and transitioned from pretend to real weapons. Within a year, Oleg abandoned his studies and enlisted in БАРС-15 , a Cossack Volunteer Battalion fighting in Ukraine.

By Feb. 10, 2025 Oleg was dead. He died aged 19, less than four months after deployment in Ukraine.

As of February 2025 there