Freedom comes with a price

A medical officer adjusting the prosthesis of Abbasov-Derskhan at the Sanatorium Rus outside Moscow. — Nanna Heitmann/The New York Times

AFTER being locked up for murder, Aleksandr Abbasov-Derskhan signed up to fight in Ukraine, thinking it would give him a shot at starting his life over. All he needed was to survive the front lines.

But after leaving prison six months early to join Storm Z, a Russian military unit made up of convicts, and losing his right leg to an anti-personnel mine, Abbasov-Derskhan believes he was deceived.