Gdyśmy byli kozakami,
Unii nie było
Z wolnymi braćmi Polakami
Wolno się nam żyło.

‘“Do Polaków’’ — wiersz ukraińskiego poety Tarasa Szewczenki

I associate Ukraine mostly with the Cossacks, a fascinating group of people in many ways, mainly because of their refusal to submit to authority and their semi-nomadic and partially militarized way of life. I guess this association is legitimate, since Ukraine does not have a history of statehood, being formally independent only since 1991, and so during it’s history it was the Cossacks who gave this landmass an identity. The word Cossack, in fact, is derived from the Turkic word “kazak” which means adventurer or free-man. As a young boy I enjoyed playing the real-time strategy game Cossacks, with the Cossack Sitcher (cavalry unit) being one of my favourite units.

On the cover of the game there is depicted the famous painting by Repin, which shows the Zaporizhian Cossacks writing a humorous, vulgar letter to the Turkish Sultan, rejecting his demands for surrender. Many, many years late I walked into a museum, close to Nevsky prospect in St.Petersburg, and saw this painting in the original, which was a bit of a…