Ushkuyniks

ушкуйник, ushkuynik), also spelled ushkuiniks, were medieval Novgorodian pirates who operated in the north of European Russia as well as along the Volga River until the 15th century.

[6] Many ushkuyniks wore mail hauberks, though it was more common for them to wear hybrid assemblages of armor acquired through purchase or looting; mail and plate bechterets was also commonly worn and this would become typical in late medieval and early modern Russia.

[citation needed] Arranged in squadrons which could number several thousand, Ushkuyniks enjoyed the patronage of influential boyar families of Novgorod, who used them to demonstrate Novgorod's military clout to its neighbours and to advance its trade interests and influence along the Volga river.

During the 1360s and 1370s, Novgorodian merchants sent out expeditions of the ushkuyniks to raid settlements along the Middle Volga, with the partial aim of protecting against incursions by rivals on their guild's monopoly on the northern hinterland and also to force the settlements to give the merchants legal trading rights.

Under command of the boyar Anfal Nikitin, they gained possession of Zhukotin, a trade emporium in Volga Bulgaria.

With Muscovy's power on the ascendant, the Novgorod Republic was pressed into putting down their filibustering activities in the first decades of the 15th century.

After Novgorod was annexed by Moscow in the 1470s, Moscow acquired the legacy of the Novgorodian policy of commercial expansion to the northeast, while at the same time pursuing its policy of "gathering the Russian lands", leading to Russian eastward expansion intensifying in the following decades, especially following the conquests of the Astrakhan and Kazan khanates in the mid-16th century.