In a desperate bid to reclaim independence and reunite the fractured Cossack state, their most recent leader, hetman Petro Doroshenko allied with the Ottoman Empire.
No one knew what kurpey meant; at least, Markelov knew that the tassel on a Cossack or Circassian cap was called a kurpey, but then how could Fomishka have injured that?
Having made their home in the Wild Fields north of the Black Sea, these cossacks— derived from a Turkic word for " free man" — are renowned as one of Europe's most formidable military forces.