In 2019 Ukraine’s Special Operations Command officially adopted a new unit patch featuring the head of a wolf with two arrows in its mouth. This was no ordinary wolf, however – it was explicitly identified by the unit as a вовкулаку or werewolf and the patch explained as follows:
“According to legend, Cossacks with supernatural powers who could turn into wolves could catch arrows with their hands or beat them off”
I was of course curious as to what folklore – or modern understanding of it – had inspired this. There is a fair bit of Cossack folklore portraying them as invulnerable, akin to Viking wolfskins or berserkers but usually without the animal skins. For the most part these ‘Kharakternyks’ are Slavic versions of the folkloric “hardman” – a man charmed to protect him from any attack, notably bullets. Indeed, all the folklore I can find on this relates to bullets and cannonballs, not arrows. This is despite folklore as late as the 19th century making reference to arrows, but never in the context of warriors being impervious to them, as far as I could see. It would have been difficult to incorporate round bullets or cannon shot, so using arrows makes design sense, I think. They are still “shots” being stopped (and in one case also destroyed) by the werewolf.
This patch followed an even more interesting cap badge approved upon their formation in 2016. This featured a wolf in profile, unusually wearing a broad belt or girdle. The issue version can be seen in this promotional video; the belt is positioned more vertically and the wolf’s mouth is more open. To get the obvious bit out of the way first, yes, this is a werewolf. The werewolf of folklore was always… just a wolf. It might be unusually large, be missing a leg or tail, or have human eyes or even a single human leg (!), depending where and when we’re talking about, but it was never the hybrid wolfman or monster of 20th/21st century fiction. So right away this symbolism is actually historically accurate. Likewise the fork (an early form of the Ukrainian trident, missing its central tine) and the motto “I’m coming at you” (perhaps better translated in this context as “I’m/We’re coming for you”) are indeed associated with Prince Sviatoslav I. This raises the main query with this symbolism, in that Ukrainian warriors turning into wolves (i.e. being werewolves) doesn’t seem to have been common, as Ukraine implies. Sviatoslav was compared to a wolf (some say leopard) in historical documents but was never claimed to have become one. Prince Vseslav of Polotsk, not mentioned, was also said to be able to take the form of a wolf. As to the idea that Cossack magicians or ‘Kharakternyk’ (Характерник) being werewolves by default as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) claim, well, that may be a reach. I can’t find anything to support that in the historical sources. However, I did find one historical Cossack who was actually supposed to have this power – Ivan Sirko (Іван Сірко). Oddly there’s no mention of his wolf form on his Wiki page, only (without cite) on the Kharakternyk page. At least one legend (found in English in ‘Cossack Motifs in Ukrainian Folk Legends’ by RI Shiyan, 2006) confirms that he was indeed thought to be able to turn into a wolf as the modern popular sources suggest. That’s good enough for me as an historical basis for the insignia, even if it may not extend to other Cossacks (if anyone does know of other evidence, let me know – it’s certainly plausible enough).
The belt is an important element in this design. B.A. Rybakov in ‘The Paganism of Ancient Rus’ (Язычество Древней Руси) writes of the волк-оборотень or волхв-волкодлак, the ‘wolf-werewolf’ (likely a similar etymological cock-up as that which led to the French loup-garou) or ‘warlock-werewolf’, a “man who adopted a wolf’s form by means of a magic belt”. He references the renowned Slavic folklorist Aleksandr Afanasiev’s ‘Poetic Views of the Slavic Nature’ (Vol. 3, 1865):
“According to Russian beliefs, vovkulaks are of two kinds: they are either sorcerers who take on animal form, or ordinary people, turned into wolves by sorcery spells.
Sorcerers usually roam like wolves at night (that is, in the darkness induced by black clouds), but during the day they again perceive human forms; they are in close intercourse with unclean spirits, and their very transformation into wolves is accomplished with the help of the devil.”
The magic or nauz belt (пояс-науз) is very interesting and is loosely explained in this article on the Ukraine SOF website. It seems to derive from Ukrainian/Kievan Rus folklore around the practice of tying knots and objects into amulets, bracelets and belts in order to achieve magical effects. In this context, that would be transformation into a wolf. In the rest of Europe, such belts were made of wolfskin (if they weren’t actual whole wolfskins). This is not specified in the Slavic version but given that some period artwork does depict belts and pouches made of furred pelt, it’s possible that this was supposed to be taken as read. The SOF author refers to it as a “battle-belt” and claims that the werewolf can only be recognised by the belt he still wears in wolf form. I’ve never seen a folkloric source that mentions a wolf wearing a belt – it’s implied that the belt turns into a wolfskin or disappears.
Even if the belt did remain on the wolf, it probably shouldn’t in theory be the tanned cowhide multiple-strapped cheres (черес) belt depicted on the insignia. According to Rybakov the ‘nauz’ (пояс-науз) as worn by magic-users in human form (he too does not mention wolves dressed in belts) was recognisably a magical belt due to being tied into complex knots. The Nauz was frowned upon and even banned, which wouldn’t make sense if one couldn’t tell one apart from an ordinary leather belt. Still, the belt on the badge does its job, which is to convey to a modern Ukrainian/Slavic audience that this is a Cossack in wolf-form – it’s what a modern Slavic audience would recognise as a ‘Cossack’ belt. Since this allows the badge to feature a folklore-accurate wolf rather than a Hollywood wolf-man, I’m all for it.
Afanasiev mentions the nauz only once, and without reference to the werewolf at all, so it’s quite unclear on what basis Rybakov links the two, but without going very deep into foreign language folklore I’ll have to take him at his word. He does include an image of a bracelet from Gorodishche that may depict a werewolf complete with his nauz, although even his own caption includes a cautious question mark. To me it could easily be a hunting hound wearing a harness. Still, whether or not he’s on the money regarding the period folklore here, he reflects 20th-21st century conception of it and is no doubt the touchstone for the modern Ukrainian understanding of werewolf folklore that underpins the SOF insignia. We know this for sure because an early (2015) variant shown here (top right) is clearly closely based upon the original 12th century bracelet artwork, with the implied belt around its middle replaced by the gold cheres belt of the final version (with only two straps). It’s actually a shame they didn’t go with this version as it’s even more rooted in tradition. This then evolved into two possible designs, with the chosen one being the left hand of these. I should note that the various Ukrainian SOF training units adopted an entirely different version of a (were)wolf’s head in profile without the arrows, as can be seen in this video, making three different in-service versions of werewolf artwork.
Overall this is a very cool use of folklore to help create an identity and tradition for a brand new unit. It does imply that all kharakternyks were thought to be werewolves, but it is at least based on a real historical piece of folkloreI. It conflates the magical nauz with the ordinary cheres belt, but does so for sound design reasons. It flies in the face of the werewolf as a bad guy, which in Christian Europe he has nearly always been, but it reflects older tales (notably Scandinavian) in which warriors are identified with, and sometimes as, the werewolf as a battle-beast – not someone you’d invite to dinner, but someone you want protecting you even if you didn’t even know they were there. Which, of course, is exactly the image that special operations forces want, and need, to project. If I may make a rare dip into politics, I have to say that so far, the SSO have shown themselves more than worthy of this symbolism in their fight against Russian aggression. Of course folklore is in any case always evolving and being reinvented, as the wider history of werewolf beliefs and stories shows: I thoroughly recommend the 2015 book ‘Werewolf Histories’, edited by Willem de Blécourt and Daniel Ogden’s The Werewolf in the Ancient World (2020). Ogden also has a short summary here of the extent to which the werewolf can be seen as a ‘universal’ myth, even if all the details over the millennia.
The BS Historian 
