помоц!

KRYMSK, Russia — On his way into town for another day of flood assistance on Thursday, the leader of the Taman district Cossacks passed a bewildering array of strangers here who were doing the same thing. There were sunburned, tattooed volunteers who traveled from Moscow with the supermodel Natalia Vodianova; others came with white-ribboned opposition leaders; about 150 volunteers from pro-Kremlin youth movements were staying in tents in the center of town.

“Romantics,” scoffed the Cossack chieftain, Col. Ivan V. Bezugly, his gold teeth glinting under a luxuriant handlebar mustache. This absurdity had begun at 3 in the morning after the flood, he said, when a woman called him asking if she could use her flimsy sedan to help retrieve bodies. “They wanted to take a drive from Moscow. But we are in a battle, because Cossack families died.”