France’s Macron sent shrapnel from spine of Russian former deputy PM
- Dmitry Rogozin, a former deputy PM of Russia, was injured last month by shelling in Donetsk, which he said killed two friends
- He sent a fragment of shell from French artillery that was cut out of his spine by surgeons to President Emmanuel Macron
A former top Russian official injured in Ukraine said Wednesday he had sent the shrapnel from a French howitzer shell that he claimed struck him to President Emmanuel Macron.
Dmitry Rogozin, an outspoken former deputy prime minister, was injured last month by shelling in Donetsk, a Russian-held city in eastern Ukraine.
Rogozin, an ardent supporter of President Vladimir Putin’s campaign in Ukraine, said that he had written to France’s ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Levy.
“In this envelope along with my letter you will see a fragment of a shell from a French 155-mm French artillery piece Caesar,” Rogozin said in his open letter to Levy published on Telegram.
“It punctured my right shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra only a millimetre away from killing me or rendering me an invalid,” he wrote.
Rogozin, also a former head of Russia’s space agency, said the incident took place during a “work meeting” in the restaurant of a hotel in Donetsk.