The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, announced Wednesday that he had sent President Emmanuel Macron the shrapnel that wounded him in Ukraine, fired according to him from a French Caesar cannon supplied to Kyiv.
Dmitry Rogozin, who currently heads a group of military advisers providing assistance to separatist forces in Ukraine, was wounded in the back in December in a Ukrainian attack on a hotel in Donetsk, in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine, which caused several dead and wounded. .
Work meeting or anniversary ceremony?
Dmitry Rogozin had assured that the incident had occurred at the time of a “work meeting” in the hotel restaurant. The Russian public television channel Rossia 24 had affirmed for its part that the former head of Roscosmos celebrated his 59th birthday there, with guests and musicians.
He had indicated after the blow that he had been operated on at the hospital because a projectile had lodged above his right shoulder blade. Dmitry Rogozin, a fervent supporter of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, explained that he wrote to the French ambassador in Moscow, Pierre Levy.
“In this envelope, along with my letter, you will see a fragment of a shell from a 155mm French Caesar artillery piece,” Dmitry Rogozin said in this open letter posted on Telegram.
“I ask you to hand over the fragment”
“It pierced my right shoulder and lodged in the fifth cervical vertebra, just a millimeter away and could have killed or disabled me,” he wrote.
Contacted, the French Embassy in Moscow declined to immediately comment. The shelling that injured Dmitry Rogozin also killed two of his friends, the latter explained, adding: “All our victims are on his conscience.”
“I ask you to hand over the fragment removed from my spine by the surgeons to French President Emmanuel Macron,” the Russian official said. “And tell him that no one will escape responsibility for war crimes,” he added.
Source: BFM TV
