Top picture: Nikolai Kozlov with his father. On Nikolai's chest there's a medal "for returning Crimea."

Source: Russian social network Vkontakte

The 31st Independent Guards Airborne Assault Brigade went for exercises on August 3. From Ulyanovsk (the unit's location) they went on trucks to Chebarkul training grounds in Chelyabinsk. Nikolai Kozlov, who grew up in Ozersk near Chelyabinsk, looked around yet the familiar Ural mountains were nowhere to be seen. Steppes stretched along the road. Soon everyone understood: They were going to Ukraine.

"They probably sent him to Crimea the same way: They allegedly redeploy you for exercises, and bang, you are in Sevastopol. The tour of duty order has been signed, you can't refuse. The system works the way that the brass knows what to do and the soldiers have no voice," says Nikolai's uncle, Sergei Kozlov. "I asked Nikolai, 'Did you sign any papers?' He said, 'If I had to, everything was signed for me.'"

According to Ozersk draft center, before June 2013, 21-year old Nikolai Kozlov, vehicle mechanic by profession, was doing compulsory military service in military unit 73612, the 31st Independent Guards Airborne Assault Brigade; since August 2013 he had been serving as a contract soldier in the same unit.

Nikolai's first military mission was in Crimea. According to photos the paratrooper's father posted to his Vkontakte page, at first Nikolai (as his father put it) "protected the new government in the uniform of young, unidentified polite people [Russian units in the covert invasion of Crimea] and then in a Berkut [former Ukrainian riot police unit] uniform." Now Nikolai's photo in a Ukrainian police uniform has been circulating on the Internet. Many have suggested that Russian paratroopers dressed as Berkut participated in dispersing the Maidan protests in February. Sergei believes the photo was taken in a corridor of the Supreme Council of Crimea that Nikolai probably guarded under the guise of a Berkut member. "The young are silly, they post photos everywhere: from Ukraine, from Crimea… no one saw any photos from Kyiv. Our guys probably weren't there. And then Nikolai is an anti-sabotage specialist, they weren't taught to wave batons."

With a medal "for returning Crimea" Nikolai returned to Ulyanovsk. He married. In August, he ended up in Ukraine.

Nikolai fought there for two weeks. According to the combat mission (as he explained to his cousin Dmitry), he suppressed the enemy artillery positions.

"Nikolai says Ukrainians are very clever and cunning fighters," Sergei told us. "Their artillery is surprisingly accurate. Kolya's unit was lured into a trap. First the Ukrainians took two of them prisoner. On August 24, our guys went to take them back and were fired upon."

As Kozlov told his uncle, they were shot with some armor-piercing gun. The first shot tore Nikolai's leg off.

"Everyone thought him dead," Sergei Kozlov says. "One of the soldiers managed to carry him away from the line of fire. Nikolai himself tourniqueted what was left of his leg to stop the bleeding and injected the medicines."

Then for two days they drove Kolya, with sepsis, fever and a great loss of blood, back to the border. In the Rostov military hospital (full of wounded, according to Kolya) he was operated on and sent to Moscow.

The paratrooper first called home from the Central military clinical hospital named after Vishnevsky. The officers did not bother, so Kolya had to borrow someone's mobile phone. "He only named the hospital, and it has loads of branches all over Moscow region. Thank God I live in Moscow. I started looking for him, enlisted my friends and barely managed to find him," Sergei says.

According to doctors' predictions, Nikolai will stay in the hospital for more than four months. According to official figures from the military insurance company, soldiers who become Group 1 disabled get 1.5 million rubles. "That's about 15 months of German unemployment benefits," Sergei counts. "Not enough to become disabled in your youth." Sergei notes that as he spoke to his nephew he did not notice that the latter had any interest in the events in Ukraine or went to fight for his ideas.

"What politics, the guy's 20… An airborne assault brigade is the elite, the special forces," Sergei Kozlov says. "It's cool there, you have a good chance to get to the UN peacekeeping force and see the world. That's what Nikolai went there for. They do get brain