‘Russian warship, go f*** yourself’: what happened next to the Ukrainians defending Snake Island?

In his 12 years in the frontier service, Bohdan Hotskiy saw many wild places. He thought his home, Ukraine, was the most beautiful country in the world: it had sea and mountains, forests and steppes, marshes and lakes. All was perfect, and so complete that Hotskiy – a 29-year-old captain – never felt the inclination to go abroad. Why bother? “We have everything,” he tells me when we meet in the Ukrainian town of Izmail, close to the border with Romania.

It is high summer. We sit outside on a bench in a central park, not far from the Danube River and Izmail’s port. Hotskiy is dressed in military uniform and holds a Kalashnikov. He is a modest and diffident person, tall and a little awkward, his dark hair receding into an arrow shape. At times Hotskiy seems reluctant to talk about his recent experiences, giving staccato answers to my questions. His story is remarkable, a tale of survival and dispossession.