But unlike most of his fellow students at a Moscow university, the 23-year-old economics major spent a year taking part in the Russian army's notorious "mopping up" operations in war-shattered Chechnya.

As he recounts his part in a war that has killed thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians, his voice quivers at times.

After studying for three years to become a special force combatant, he was sent to Chechnya in 2000, nine months after the beginning of the second war that Moscow has waged against separatists in a decade.

There, he joined the "Volkodavi" brigade, named after dogs "trained to kill wolves" -- the symbol of Chechen separatists.

Before being sent to Chechnya he and his comrades were made to watch videos of Russian soldiers being tortured by rebels -- "to make us vicious so that we would not feel any pity."

Asked about what he did in Chechnya, Dmitry answers simply: "mopping up operations," much like another student would say he was studying botany.

The phrase strikes dread into the heart of Chechens -- Russian troops have been accused of kidnappings, murder and looting during the operations, after which many civilians have simply disappeared.

But Dmitry regarded them as a job, and an interesting one at that.

With 19 other combatants, he carried out attacks on rebel mountain hideouts in the mountainous south of the Caucasus republic where he was sent by helicopter with one clear instruction: "eliminate the enemy."

"This is the principle of hunters -- the enemy's location is determined and we are sent there," he said in a trembling voice.

Together with other Russian units, Dmitry also took part in mopping up raids in villages, arresting Chechen men identified by the Russian army as rebel fighters.

Dmitry dismisses personal responsibility on charges of human rights violations that have directed at Russian forces by rights groups.

"It is not our problem if the commanders have incorrectly defined the target. It is their problem if they choose the wrong objective, we only carry out orders."

He is quite critical of the leadership in the Russian army, accusing it of all kinds of trafficking, including in soldiers. He said some officers had "sold" their subordinates to the rebels -- the targeted person would be set up for capture during an operation, with the officer pocketing an unspecified sum.

"We were tools, cannon fodder," he said.

Dmitry himself was captured by rebels during fighting in the summer of 2001 and held for three months in an area of Grozny before a Russian rights group, the Soldiers's Mothers committee, located him.

His father managed to buy him back for an unspecified sum from the rebels -- which has earned him the status of deserter from Russian army.

"I was lucky, I was well treated, they fed me," said Dmitry.

The only conversation that he had with a Chechen during his captivity was when one of his captors told him of his wife and child had died in shelling by the Russian army.

After his liberation, Dmitry spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, and says he is now "more or less on his feet again."

Today, he is studying economics in Moscow and sees no way out of the war deadlock in Chechnya.

He has no regrets about his army service, apart from having been "caught," and says that if he could, he would gladly trade his schoolbooks for his former uniform if it were not for the deserter mark against him.

Russian authorities say some 5,300 Russian soldiers have died in Chechnya since 1999. The Soldiers's Mothers committee puts this figure at over 13,000.