Son of high-ranking Northern Fleet captain is killed in Ukraine

Nikita Kozlyuk had been fighting on occupied Ukrainian land since October 2022. On the 20th of January 2024, he was killed in battle near the village of Synkivka in the Kharkiv region.

The 21-year old man served in a motorised rifle brigade as part of the Russian 6th General Army. He operated under the call name “Strizh” (sand martin), a social media post informs.

Before signing up for Russia’s war of aggression, he reportedly worked in naval shipyard No 35 in Murmansk. As his body was returned to the north Russian region, he was port-mortem awarded a so-called ‘medal of bravery.’

Nikita Kozlyuk is one of several hundred men from the north Russian region of Murmansk that have vanished in the onslaught on Ukraine.

But Kozlyuk is also member of a renown military family. His father Yuri is a military man that has worked his way up to a high position in the Northern Fleet.

Yuri Borisovich Kozlyuk is today 1st Rang Captain and in charge of the Northern Fleet’s department of radio and communications.

He is a decorated navy captain and in 2013 was awarded the Order for Service for the Motherland.

Yuri Kozlyuk is also known as an excellent swimmer and has won a number of competitions. In March 2022, he was one of four military men from the Northern Fleet that got an award after he managed to swim 100 meters in full uniform and with a machine gun in less than 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

The 53-year old captain is a member of the military establishment in Northern Fleet headquarter city Severomorsk. No wonder, the death of his son is given wide attention across the militarised Kola Peninsula.

Most of the thousands of locals that are either killed or crippled on the battlefield are given little or zero public attention as Moscow actively attempts to conceal and downplay consequences. Publicity about killed soldiers can lead to criminal charges for friends and relatives.

The Kozlyuk family, meanwhile, is honoured for Nikita’s alleged achievements and information about his death is widely published by the information channels of the Northern Fleet.

On the 18th of June, the parents of Nikita were invited to the Severomorsk city mayor’s office to get his son’s medal.

“Thank you, Yuri Borisovich, and your wife Tatiana Anatolyevna, for your son, a real hero, that you have raised to become a courageous and brave man,” Severomorsk Mayor Oleg Prasov told the couple.

“He gave his life for the protection of the interests of his country, and with honour executed his military and civilian duty,” the mayor, himself a military man, added.

It is not known how many men from the Kola Peninsula that have been killed in the war. But the Barents Observer has the names of more than 350 individuals. Many of them served for the 200th Motorised Rifle Brigade and the 61st Naval Infantry Brigade, but there are also a significant number of killed men from other units, including naval sailors from the Northern Fleet’s submarine bases.