User blog comment:0RedEye/Racial Key Critique 1: Europeans/@comment-34650195-20180811181838/@comment-34650195-20180811195731

They do not have a bloodline. There exist "bloodline cossack" who become cossacks because their ancestors were cossacks, but they as well take usual Russians in their ranks and do not consider their "less cossack". Certain territories that were specifically given for cossack to settle and the population strongly associates themselves with cossack culture, but they never consider themselves actual cossacks and the entire idea of them not being Russians but something else is absurd. But again, there are a ton of cossacks who serve and in other regions who are not viewed any less cossack. It is a warrior culture and not a nation or an ethnicity in any way.