'Shoot me,' I begged. 'I don't want to die a slow death'

Having lost his leg to an anti-tank missile, Ruslan Serbov pleaded with comrades to end his agony. Ahead of the third anniversary of Russia's all-out invasion of his country, he tells Lord Ashcroft he has no regrets about his sacrifice

- Lord Ashcroft

RUSLAN Serbov strides towards me sporting the physique of a man who works out in the gym every day.

Barrel-chested and with tattooed biceps the size of tree trunks, he only just squeezes into his extra-large T-shirt. The only hint he is carrying an injury comes from a slight limp in his left leg.

His broad smile, as he gives me a firm handshake, also reveals nothing of the huge sacrifices both physical and mental - that he has made for his country since Ukraine's all-out war with Russia began nearly three years ago.

Furthermore, his black humour when discussing his serious battle wounds belies just how close he came to death while defending his homeland.

When Ruslan's left leg was shot clean off just below the knee by a Russian anti-tank missile, his initial reaction was to ask a comrade to shoot him dead. "Not today," was the unhelpful reply.

Minutes later, however, he seized on a photo opportunity and asked his comrade to search for his missing leg so he could pose for a picture clutching his limb.

"Just imagine how cool that photo would have been me lying on the ground, holding my own leg?" he says with a widening grin.

"But my leg had flown about 100 metres away and he couldn't find it." Ruslan, now 31, is one of up to 100,000 Ukrainians, most who served in its armed forces, who have lost one or more limbs during the war. He did so in the most dramatic of circumstances in the early days of the war, when he chose to fight with his former comrades in the defence of Mariupol.

The son of two entrepreneurs and the middle of three brothers, he was born in Mykolaiv, south-eastern Ukraine. From a close-knit family, he was educated in his home city before studying law at Kharkiv University, graduating in 2014. That was the same year that Russia made its illegal incursions into Crimea and other eastern areas of Ukraine.