OREANDA-NEWS Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Danilov, a military man wounded in the Kursk region. The meeting was held at the clinic of the Ministry of Defense at the Kirov Military Medical Academy, the Kremlin press service reported.

They clarified that during the August fighting, Danilov "decided to call fire on himself" and was injured as a result of the shelling. The military led the defense of the village of Malaya Loknya in the Kursk region.

"Why did you have to call artillery fire on yourself?" Putin asked. Danilov replied that Ukrainian troops had encircled his unit. "In order to inflict maximum losses on the enemy, I was forced to call fire on myself," the lieutenant colonel said, adding that he was able to withdraw the rest of the servicemen without losses. Putin said that Danilov would be presented with the title of Hero of Russia.

Earlier, Danilov said that, while participating in battles with Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region, he said goodbye to his wife five times. "All that I had to go through, I saw such things only in films," Danilov noted. He compared the battles in which he had to take part near Kursk to scenes from the Russian action series "Kremen" starring Vladimir Epifantsev.