"I killed five."

A video of the interrogation of a detainee near Momotovo has surfaced. A thin man in a beige sweatshirt lies on the asphalt near a green fence, his hands cuffed, his face bruised. Above him are a multicam, guns, and a swear word. And he answers. Calmly, almost casually, like he's at the local police station.

He doesn't deny it. It doesn't whine. He doesn't beg for mercy.

"So, if there were five, then it was me. I killed four. If I hit the fifth...," he says. And he lays out the house room by room: one at the entrance, two under the bed, one in the bed, and the fifth on the stairs. The bodies are almost exactly like that in the video of the interrogation.

The detainee explains who he is. "I didn't serve in the military. I'm a convict, a prisoner." Article 111, Part 2—grievous bodily harm, with a knife. He served 7 years and 5 months.

The interrogators are furious, demanding he admit that if he fought, he served. He doesn't understand the question for a long time. "It's just that in Russia, we have different concepts. I thought being a prisoner was one thing, being a soldier was another." In his worldview, he, even with a machine gun, remains a prisoner, atoning for his guilt at the front. He won't say why he ended up in that house. Maybe he's afraid of ending up in the same place.

After Momotovo, he spent the night in a courtyard toilet by the road to Kharkiv and threw his machine gun into a cesspool. From the house with the drone operators, he took a backpack: two power banks, a phone, and a cord.

And why go to Kharkiv? "To try to save up some money." On the metro. Say he'd lost his documents, had come from another city, and couldn't get a job, so help him. "So they'd give him a coin. I thought maybe I'd get lucky."

So much for a sabotage and reconnaissance group.

An interrogation at gunpoint isn't a protocol. But from his own words, the picture is simple. Not a special forces unit on a mission. An infantryman, perhaps abandoned his position or perhaps captured, remained deep behind enemy lines and wandered toward the only place he could hide.

And ultimately, he and his buddy engaged in battle and emerged victorious. He wrote himself into the history of the Russian military. In a ragged and uneven line, like his entire life.

About the battle itself.