The Kremlin's envoy to the North Caucasus has been made a member of a group of fearsome warrior horsemen who defended Russia's borders for the tsars in the days of yore.
Alexander Khloponin was granted admission to the Terek Cossacks in a lush ceremony in the spa town of Pyatigorsk on Saturday.
"I serve Russia, the Terek Cossack Host and God," Khloponin said.
The Cossacks were suppressed by the Communists as a "counter-revolutionary element" threatening to undermine the Soviet regime, but have emerged to reassert themselves as an influential political group after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
Their fervent patriotism and belief in discipline and authority have won them support from the Kremlin, with the then-president Vladimir Putin getting himself his own Cossack advisor in the early 2000s.
PYATIGORSK, October 30 (RIA Novosti)
