Major General Mikhail Georgievich Kripunov White cossack general
Major General Mikhail Georgievich Kripunov. Born in 1889, he graduated from the Donsk Cadet Corps and Nicholas Cavalry School, joining the Ataman Cossack regiment of the Imperial Guard in 1909 as a cornet. By the Great War, he was a captain in charge of a squadron and was decorated. By 1915, he had been seconded to the Tsar as an ADC. Returning to his regiment in 1916, he brought what Cossacks he could home in late 1917 as the army disentigrated and cast his lot with first Kaledin and then Kransnov’s successive Cossack armies in the Don and Kuban region. Rising to major general by 1920, he ultimately commanded the 2nd Cavalry Division under Wrangel. Post Civil War exile led him to Greecen, then Yugoslavia and by 1924 to France. He spent WWII in Ireland before ultimately settling in Jerusalem in the 1960s. A popular figure in ROVs circles and among Cossack and Imperial Guard veterans, he died in 1983, aged 94, the last living ADC to the Tsar, the last White general from the Civil War, and the last officer of the Ataman Cossack Regiment.