The former head of Russias space company Dmitry Rogozin stated on Wednesday that he had sent a piece of shrapnel from a French howitzer shell that hurt him in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine last month to French President Emmanuel Macron.
Rogozin, an outspoken public figure who has likewise served as Russias deputy prime minister, was injured in a December attack on a Donetsk hotel where he had reportedly been commemorating his birthday with the deputy head of the breakaway Donetsk Peoples Republic, among others.Ukraines Border Guard Service later said the attack, in which two people died, had been meant as an alerting to other Russians not to break the law by illegally getting in Ukrainian territory.Rogozin, who stays an ardent fan of President Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine in spite of his recent termination from Roscosmos, said that he had actually composed to Frances ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Levy.
In this envelope together with my letter you will see shrapnel from a shell fired by a French 155-mm Caesar artillery, Rogozin said in an open letter to Levy released on Telegram.
It pierced my best shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra just a millimeter away from killing me or rendering me an invalid, he wrote.Rogozin stated the incident happened throughout a work conference in the restaurant of a hotel in Donetsk.
Russian state news channel Rossiya 24 TV reported at the time that he had been commemorating his 59th birthday.The channel broadcast pictures of the hotel and dining establishment with parts of the roofing system destroyed and debris spread all around.Rogozin said he had regularly remained in this hotel throughout journeys to the Donetsk region, which Russia declared to have annexed in September along with 3 other Ukrainian regions, in spite of widespread condemnation from the West.Of his 2 friends who were eliminated in the attack, Rogozin said: All our victims are on your conscience .
I ask that you offer the shrapnel the cosmetic surgeons eliminated of my spine to French President Emmanuel Macron, Rogozin wrote.
And tell him that nobody will get away duty for war crimes, he added.The French embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the letter.AFP contributed reporting.